06/22/2025
About a week and a half ago, I had a day off with which I decided to go to West Virginia as it was only about an hour out of the way and I wanted to cross it off the list. (2 states to go!)
I picked Shepherdstown off the map mostly at random with the intent to drop off a copy of the book at the local bookstore and be on my way. I ended up spending the entire day there, fully immersed in and enchanted with the tiny border town that I had found.
I found a great deal on a Radiohead album at the local record store. I found an awesome print of a Costa Rican frog at an art gallery with a beautiful mural painted on its side. I ran into the author of the book Skoolie who lives there and had stopped to chat about my van conversion.
One of the locals informed me I was only about 20 minutes from Harper's Ferry, a local tourist attraction so I drove down there afterwards and saw some cool animals on the way.
Harper's Ferry is right at a trident in the river that separates WV, VA, and MD and the 11th picture here is taken from WV and is of the two others. After that I walked across a bridge from West Virginia into Maryland just for the sake of walking between two different states and found a cool tunnel on the other side.
Overall, despite every other local making sure I understood that Shepherdstown was nothing like the rest of the state, my personal experience with West Virginia makes it easy to rate it a solid 11/10 and one of the coolest places I've taken the time to visit!
- Bryan
