Lessons from Grad School: Work Doesn’t Evaporate

Part 2

A good workout should always be followed up with good food. Archie’s BBQ is famous in the Deep Creek Area, as we approached on Garrett Highway a guy dressed as a pig was our guide into the parking lot. The ribs weren’t the best I’ve ever had, but the brisket and pulled pork are contenders. Another great food establishment in the area is Farmer’s Market in Oakland. Farmer’s Market is part of a trifecta of markets (Hilltop Fruit Market in Grantsville, MD and Fruit Bowl in Cumberland, MD are the others) offering fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, cheeses, local foods, and several hundred varieties of candy. No visit to western Maryland is complete unless you stock up at one of the three markets.

Following the binge on Garrett County’s best food was a flash mob in downtown Oakland. World-Wide Flash Mobs (WWFMs) are events periodically held in the geocaching world. These are 15 minute events that draw people from all over to converge on a location, briefly converse, sign a log, trade items, and disperse. This one was at Oakland’s old rail depot, which is across from the Garrett County Museum of Transportation. Almost perfectly, a train rolled past in the middle of the event. The event wrapped up quickly, but the adventure continued.

Before leaving Oakland, Chris and I hiked up to the foot of a cell phone tower to a little known observation deck to look down on the town. We imagine it largely looks as it did 50 years ago. Maryland seems to take a special pride in its small towns and I have yet to see one lacking in character and civic efforts for preservation. Maryland’s small towns are the standard to which I hold all others to.

From Oakland we traveled into West Virginia where we would follow West Virginia Route 7 back to Morgantown. We stopped by Hopemont to see the Hopemont Hospital, originally established as a tuberculosis sanitarium now a long-term care facility operated by the state. The hospital campus is beautiful, featuring many large trees and grand old buildings. It is a relic of a very different time for medical care.

From Hopemont we enter Terra Alta, a town defined by it’s half-mile elevation and the steel rails passing along the edge of town. While visiting the Veteran’s Memorial Garden we heard the familiar sounds of an approaching train and ran across an open field to greet the train near the tracks. Once the short train passed we noticed an old concrete mile post, which did not match the current mile post, and a damaged wye marker.

Not since these tracks were part of Western Maryland's network!

Heading toward Kingwood we made a unique discovery, a roadside spring. This spring had evidently been around for some time as an antique trough sat next to where the spring emerged from a hose hanging on a tree stump. The water was delicious. Apparently many of the locals like to stop by and fill buckets and bottles from this spring.

Drinking fresh mountain spring water

Continuing on we crossed over the Cheat River and into Kingwood. Like Oakland, little has changed since the 1950s, although the vacant store fronts and crumbling sidewalks of some areas are in stark contrast to the neighborhoods surrounding central Oakland. While Oakland presents a nice image of days gone by, Kingwood and Masontown are images of modern hard times. Yet these communities still possess many redeeming qualities, most notably in their kind, resilient, and hardworking residents.

The last few miles into Morgantown follow Decker’s Creek. Across the creek is the Decker’s Creek Rail Trail. Here the canyon gets narrow in places as the hillsides are thickly covered with rhododendron. When in bloom it is surely an incredible sight to behold. Breaks in the density of rhododendron have been carved out where wide spots in the road allow for parking. Others making the best of their Saturday parked along the road and made their way to the cool waters of the creek to cool off.

As for us, we fixed a nice dinner at home and began to plan future daylong vacations. Work could be picked up tomorrow, it could wait a few more hours for my newly refreshed attention.