Monday, March 18 2024

Road video and map

The phrase from John Denver’s “Take me Home, Country Roads” has been adopted by the state’s tourist promoters and today’s experience is well described by it. The 100 mile (161 km) drive was entirely on scenic byways and narrow country roads that curved over and around the many hills and ran alongside rivers in the valleys. No individual location deserves special attention but the scenery was always interesting and the driving experience wonderful. One element that, to some extent, prevented getting to a heavenly state was the weather. Yesterday’s sunny 65° F (18° C) dropped to a partly cloudy 37° (3° C) today and included a few snow flakes.

My first stop en route was at Seneca Rocks. These are some iconic vertical fins of quartzite that rise almost 900 feet (274 m) above a stream to form one of the most well known landscapes in West Virginia.

I used a well maintained trail to hike to an overlook near the peak of the left fin. It’s not difficult but is a steady climb along switchbacks.

The trail begins by crossing the south channel of the North fork of the Potomac river, the same one that, greatly enlarged, runs through Washington, DC.

And ends with a wonderful of the valley below.

I then headed to a location where the heavens are studied, the Green Bank Observatory. This is the location of one of the main U.S. sites for astronomical research using radio telescopes. There are six research telescopes in operation here as well as one that is solely used by students learning about radio astronomy or submitting research requests for their own projects. The observatory is in the National Radio Quiet Zone which covers about 13,000 square miles (33,670 square km) where large scale radio emissions are controlled by law. Within 10 miles of Green Bank only emergency radio emissions are allowed and the residents cannot use microwave ovens without special precautions and are not permitted to use WiFi networks at all. There is no cell phone service either. The 40,000 annual visitors must turn off phones and cannot use digital cameras, except in the car park and visitor center. This is because the radio signals from deep space are incredibly feeble.

The observatory has made major discoveries and is home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. This means that it can be pointed toward any object in the sky whereas, because of their size, many radio telescopes can only move vertically and have to wait for the earth to rotate to the appropriate horizontal direction to get measurements. I took a bus tour that takes visitors close to the telescope and it was repositioning at the time. Despite having a dish with a surface area of 2.3 acres (9,300 sq m) and weighing over 7,000 tons it rotated almost 180 degrees in the 10 minutes I was watching.

The Green Bank Telescope as seen from the closest point in the parking lot.

After arriving at my motel for the night the snow began to fall more heavily but less than an inch (2.5 cm) of accumulation is expected overnight.