YEAR THREE: Bath County, Virginia

In West Virginia, the good roads go to Charleston. Interstate 77 from Cleveland and Parkersburg, I-79 from Erie, Pennsylvania and Morgantown, and I-64 from Louisville and Huntington, crossing the mountains into Virginia, are the main roads. Interstate 68 heads east from Morgantown to Cumberland, Maryland, connecting eventually to Baltimore and Washington.

Heading to the eastern side of West Virginia, or over the mountains to Virginia between 68 and 64 is harder. The roads are two-lane and often run through small towns. To get to Warm Springs, the county seat of Bath County, the logical route, on the map anyway, is US 250, which winds around the mountains and through National Forests to Virginia. How people traveled to Richmond from Morgantown before the Civil War is a mystery to me. Maybe hardly anyone lived in Morgantown then, so it didn't come up often. Still, three hundred miles over the mountains must have been quite a haul.

Most of Bath County is in George Washington National Forest. Warm Springs has one street with the county courthouse, the library, the police station, the tourist center, and a handful of houses. Everything else is rural. Hot Springs, the resort town five miles south, has a short main street. There are bars and restaurants on one block. The IGA Market is between the two towns and closes at 8.

The original attraction in Bath County is the warm springs from which the county seat takes its name. The Homestead Resort, a sprawling hotel with hundreds of acres of grounds, is at the center of Hot Springs. The hotel has restaurants, shopping, golf, tennis, skiing in winter, an elaborate water park and movies in the evening. It is run by Omni Resorts.

It's less than two hundred miles to Warm Springs from Morgantown, which in my system means it's a one-night stay, especially in an underpopulated rural area. The Homestead is the only chain hotel. There are other motels and some bed-and-breakfasts. In the county tourist brochure, the motels all said "call for information," and none of the bed-and-breakfasts were listed with PurpleRoofs.com, which lists gay-friendly B&Bs. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but this is the rural South. Bath County voted 60-40 for Romney in 2012, not the worst in Virginia, but enough to worry me about how I might be treated, both as a semi-obvious gay man, and as someone who doesn't look quite white enough.

So I booked a night at The Homestead, $247 plus a $52 resort fee, and taxes. Total: $308 for one night, lots more than I usually spend. I had hoped Joe would go with me, but with holidays coming up and Sunday school starting, he couldn't do it. My fault for marrying a younger man with a job.

The hotel is beautiful, and in a lovely spot. It's traditional without being overbearing about it. I enjoyed wearing my few outfits of casual designer clothes and walking around the grounds. The early August weather was pleasant, cooler and less muggy than Morgantown. The tips of the leaves were beginning to change color already. Breakfast was bountiful, even if I didn't indulge. I enjoyed the locally-made yogurt and cream cheese, the fresh berries, a decent bagel and green tea. I skipped the eggs, pork products, grits, oatmeal, waffles and french toast.

The resort stuff is wasted on me. I don't play tennis or golf, didn't go to the pool. I did pay $17 to "take the waters" in Warm Springs. The building was supposed to be designed by Thomas Jefferson. It was almost falling down, but the idea of bathing in a spring appealed to me. I only used half of my allotted hour, afraid my blood pressure would drop far enough to make me pass out. I was relaxed and only mildly dizzy when I left.

Most of my time in Bath County, I tooled around searching for places on The National Register of Historic Places. There were seventeen, including the hotel, and an archaeological site where the location is not public. I found a few old houses, some at the end of private lanes or behind gates, and thus inaccessible. The Warwick Mansion in Hidden Valley, part of George Washington National Forest, was the best and most visible of the historic places. If one wanted to explore Bath County on a budget, spaces to camp in the National Forest are ten dollars. I would have to be someone else to do that.

I enjoyed Bath County. I wish I had the money and the ability to relax to spend a week at The Homestead, but for me, an overnight stay was affordable and enough time there. The resort advertises that has been there since 1766. The building is twentieth century, but it's not hard to imagine that the African-American men who are waiters in the breakfast room at one time were slaves. There were a few African-American families at the hotel, one South Asian-looking family, and a guy walking the grounds in an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) T-shirt. Were I a better historian, I would find out when the resort abandoned a "White Christians only" policy.

Those days are, thankfully, over. Still, it's a little like I imagine Germany was twenty years ago, where the villainous government is gone, but some of the participants are still around.

It was fun being in a beautiful place, both the countryside and the resort, and a lovely drive. For me, it's a good change of pace from my usual love of cities.

I'll put up pics later today.
And here they are: