Let's Go for a Train Ride!

Our daughter had been able to ride The Potomac Eagle train when she was still in public school as part of a field trip at the end of the school year one year.  It's a lovely scenic ride up the South Branch of the Potomac River in Hampshire County WV.  However, we took our children out of public school to homeschool them before our son had the opportunity to ride the train.

Then one summer we took his two daughters to ride the train when they were here with us.  Our daughter, son-in-law had taken their son (our grandson) to ride the train one summer. leaving our son and daughter-in-law as the only ones in the family who hadn't ridden the train.

It's something that I have always wanted to do for them, but it just hadn't worked out for any of the times they came to visit.  Then Covid happened and that changed a lot of things.  When our son and daughter-in-law were here recently it was the first time he'd been able to be here for two and a half years.  When he'd called to work out the details of their visit, I told Strongheart that this would be the perfect time to see to it that our son and daughter-in-law had that train ride.  We ordered the tickets and told him we had a surprise for them when they came.  Finally, just the night before he came, he guessed what the surprise was, and he was ecstatic!  

Tuesday of the week that they were here, we hopped in the car and made a few stops along the way...Sam Beachy and Sons was our first stop for some apple cider.  Next stop was at Springs Store, which is a Mennonite bulk food store.  Our son and daughter-in-law had so much fun in this store because they couldn't believe how inexpensive the prices were.  They took several things home from here.  Our trip continued to Romney WV and the home of Strongheart's one sister.  Our son had expressed a desire to stop and visit with her because she used to babysit him when he was a little guy before he started school.  That was fun.  Finally, it was time to depart to the train station to begin our adventure.  The rest of the post will be pictures.

Here we are on the observation car.

The weather was absolutely perfect that day and was definitely the place to ride.

This was the view that we were looking for.

The excursion we took was a trip up the trough.

There are places that can only be reached in this area by boat

 because there are no roads.

It was at this point that the train changed tracks, and we went back to the station.

The trip was three hours total.

After leaving the station we went to our favorite restaurant in that area.  It was such a wonderful way to end a wonderful day.  After a delicious meal, we got back in the car and drove the two hours back home.