The Road to Nowhere

Have you ever been on road trip without a road map? And furthermore have you literally been the back seat rider (not backseat driver)? Well, I was this past Friday on a preplanned Garmin GPS controlled drive. It was a trip to "wild and wonderful" West by God Virginia to Cass Scenic Railroad State Park. http://www.cassrailroad.com/ However, getting there from Front Royal, VA turned out to be the real adventure. Looks pretty simple on the map http://www.cassrailroad.com/map.html I ask the driver if we had a WV paper map in the car and the response was no but Garmin route had been check against a map before leaving left home. In hindsight I can now say without reservation that did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling as soon as we left the paved highway into the wild and wonderful wilderness of a crush and run road. My first response under my breath was WTF and then I voiced my concern are you sure? The response was, "Garmin sez this is the way". Turns out Garmin must have recalculated when we zigged back northwest on US-250 and WV-92 instead of zagging southwest on WV-92 and WV-28 and then forgot to tell us to make a U-turn in Bartow, WV. Anyhow it put us on unpaved Forest Rd 235 and I remember us going by the Cheat Mountain Club. http://www.cheatmountainclub.com/ The Garmin took us by this lodge on our adventure. Looks like a great place to have a family reunion but pricey! We should have checked it out. http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1115 We left Front Royal at 7 a.m. with plans to ride the 11 a.m. train. We got to Cass, WV in time to see the 1 p.m. train leaving for Whittaker station. so we ended up riding the 3 p.m. train. We had plenty of time for our picnic lunch while waiting on the next train. Good time was had by all and there was much laughter over this mis-adventure that turned out fine in the end. I am however, still working on my "Let go let God" routine. Not quite there yet. On the way back we drove by Radio Telescope in Green Bank, WV https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt