Long Day in the Mountains. Appalachian Chinese Food.
West Virginia Travelog #15
Beckley, WV - Mon, 18 Sep 2023. 10:30pm
It's late evening on Monday and we're back at our hotel in Beckley, WV, after a long day of driving and hike. We visited, like, six waterfalls and logged 386 miles in the car. By way of comparison that's more than the 324 we drove coming up here from Charlotte (and round-tripping to the national park) on Saturday.
After our last hiking stop, at Douglas, Kennedy, and Albert Falls, we knew we'd be getting back to Beckley too late for dinner. We started looking for eats in small towns along the way. The choices in small-town Appalachia aren't great. We settled on a pizza-and-pasta restaurant, but after we sat down there we found that service was running really slowly. We bounced out and tried a Mexican restaurant next door (yes, we stopped in, like, the one small town with a Mexican restaurant) but it was closed for the next several days.
Dejected and about to get back in the car, I spotted a Chinese buffet restaurant across the parking lot. Hawk was reluctant at first, but I suggested we could look at the food on the buffet and bounce again if it looked disgusting. It looked... surprisingly good, for small-town Appalachian Chinese. When we walked in we were the only customers there, but apparently us breaking the seal on the doors let everyone in town know that cosmopolitan urbanites thought it was edible, and soon there were six other tables of people dining with us.
We got back to the hotel just in time to slip into the hot tub for a soak. Now we're feeling more relaxed and ready for bed. We have a lot planned for tomorrow- t's our last day in West Virginia! How how time flies.
Beckley, WV - Mon, 18 Sep 2023. 10:30pm
It's late evening on Monday and we're back at our hotel in Beckley, WV, after a long day of driving and hike. We visited, like, six waterfalls and logged 386 miles in the car. By way of comparison that's more than the 324 we drove coming up here from Charlotte (and round-tripping to the national park) on Saturday.
After our last hiking stop, at Douglas, Kennedy, and Albert Falls, we knew we'd be getting back to Beckley too late for dinner. We started looking for eats in small towns along the way. The choices in small-town Appalachia aren't great. We settled on a pizza-and-pasta restaurant, but after we sat down there we found that service was running really slowly. We bounced out and tried a Mexican restaurant next door (yes, we stopped in, like, the one small town with a Mexican restaurant) but it was closed for the next several days.
Dejected and about to get back in the car, I spotted a Chinese buffet restaurant across the parking lot. Hawk was reluctant at first, but I suggested we could look at the food on the buffet and bounce again if it looked disgusting. It looked... surprisingly good, for small-town Appalachian Chinese. When we walked in we were the only customers there, but apparently us breaking the seal on the doors let everyone in town know that cosmopolitan urbanites thought it was edible, and soon there were six other tables of people dining with us.
We got back to the hotel just in time to slip into the hot tub for a soak. Now we're feeling more relaxed and ready for bed. We have a lot planned for tomorrow- t's our last day in West Virginia! How how time flies.