Visit from Mom and Patty

In mid-October, my sister Patty flew out from Kansas City and brought my mom with her for her first visit to our place in West Virginia. We had a great week of visiting and hanging out. While they were here, we did the Potomac Eagle train trip through the Trough. As usual, the scenery was excellent, we hit the leaves in full color and saw a few eagles from the train. Here are a couple of pictures.

Here's one of mom, Patty, and Donna.

Donna's sister Dolores, her Dad, and husband Paul. These are taken at the station before leaving- the trip down and back through the Trough on the South Branch of the Potomac takes about 3 hours.

Here are a couple of pictures of the trip, it was an overcast day but we were lucky and the rain held off.

Miss Squeaky Pictures

Earlier this summer, a kitten that looked to be about 6-9 months old showed up at the house and is now a full time resident. She's full grown now and an outside cat but does like to sneak in if a door is left open. She tolerates the dogs but if she runs, then chaos breaks out and they all have to chase- looks like Miss Squeaky will be an outside cat. We have a cat door in my workshop so she can get out of the cold and a heated pad on the screened porch so she'll do fine- so far, she prefers to be on the porch so she can track our movements.

She's really friendly once she gets to know you and loves to rub against your legs or sit with you outside by the fire. When we're working outside, she likes to stay close by.

Here are a few pictures.

Following us between the guest cabin and the house. Squeaky loves to visit Donna's dad, sister, and brother in law who are staying in the cabin!

Enjoying a snuggle with Donna by the fire.

Church House Pictures

Here are 3 pictures of the main room in the church house, makes up the living area, eating space, and kitchen.

99% of everything you see in all these pictures was already in the house as part of the purchase. We'll have a lot of clothing and stuff to take to Goodwill once we start clearing out the bedrooms. You can see we had a fire in the wood stove as it was in the 40's here and very cold inside- the stove did a nice job getting the main room up to the low 60's by the time we were ready to wrap up for the day.

Here's a shot of the sink, you just don't see orange like this anymore!

The next pictures show the metal spiral stairs up to the loft that runs about 75% of the length of the church. The close up pictures of the light show that it was originally an oil or kerosene fixture that was converted to electric some time ago.

Here's a picture standing at the back of the loft looking back to the stairs, you can see all the stuff that was left up there, there are a lot of old chairs, tables, and beds along with a collection of other "treasures". We found some fishing gear, some magazines from the 60's and early 70's, books, and there are a couple of large, truck inner tubes inflated and ready for the river!

There is a lot to go through and clean up but looks like this would be a great spot to spend some time in the summer. We're still figuring out how much we'll want to change- we know we'll want to improve the stairs coming in to the church on the front- maybe a deck along with the stairs as it would be a great place for to watch that water go by and hold a grill.

More as we move along, enjoy.

Church Property Update

Donna and I closed on the church property earlier this week, sale went as planned with a few bits of interesting information learned along the way. Turns out the listing was incorrect and there are actually two pieces of property that totals about 1/2 an acre instead of the original 1/4 acre we thought it was setting on. There was an interesting story and background about how there came to be two properties divided by the "Old County Road" that crosses through and allows access to one more >200 acre property beside us.

We had 65 degree weather the day we closed so I brought a kayak and took a quick tour on the river and looks like it is going to be great. Very little current at this point so was an easy paddle up stream (towards Romney) and looks like there are some nice riffles about a 1/3 of the mile in both directions that I saved to explore another day. If we get another nice day, will have to put a kayak in under the Romney bridge and float to the church, looks to be about 5 or 6 miles. If you look at a map of the South Branch of the  Potomac near Romney, you'll see what's called Hanging Rocks about 5 miles north- these rocks are very close to the property to give you an idea where we are.

Here's a couple of pictures from the water, you can see the Hanging Rocks in the second picture.

Next post will show some pictures from inside the house.