Grafton has an immense, abandoned rail depot.  Its size seems disproportionate to today's rail traffic, and it quickly becomes obvious that things must have been busier here in the past.  After looking up Grafton's history, it was indeed an important place to the B&O Railroad.  With all the tunnel-building activities going on in this area, and the railroad's machine shop and foundry nearby, a large depot would have been required.

I'm not sure this building can be saved.  I'm glad I got some pictures of it.  To obtain the long-shot view, I had to climb a hill in front of a church.  While composing the shot, two carloads of young people arrived, all dressed up in formal attire, laughing and having a great time.  They ran into the church.  It was a wedding.  I remember thinking that not all is doom and gloom in Grafton.  Life is going on, and new generations replace the old.  Grafton's young people have their whole future ahead of them.

Liz and I left Chesapeake this morning.  We got onto Rout 50 headed for West Virginia.  The scenery is beautiful for the most part.  People have a different way of life around here for sure.  We saw one house what was made of 5 trailors welded together.  The hills make for an interesting drive and are really steep in some places.  There are signs all over the road that show busted trucks rolling down hills.  We stopped only when we really had to.  I guess we've seen Deliverance too many times.  None of them seem that bad, but the did stare us down when we stopped in an Exxon to pee and get a snack. 

I wonder how much I can get for Liz as a mountain bride. 

We planned to stay the night in Clarksburg and on the way stopped in Grafton to see the Tygart Lake State Park.  You have to drive through 'downtown' Grafton to get to the Lake.  Grafton is rundown but charming.  You can tell that when the rail road was still operating around here, the town was nice.  Now its sort of shabby and some of the older bulidings that were picturesque back in the day are boarded up.  People in town have a lot of West Virginia Mountaineer pride though. 

Tygart Lake was more beautiful mountain scenery.  We stopped at the lodge to get some pictures of the blue lake.  There were a lot of boats on the lake, but we didn't see anyone swimming.  We walked down the trail to the beach area and got some good shots.