Holy crap! I just found out that the submit@picturewestvirginia.com email address wasn’t forwarding right and I missed a few posts! Sorry, guys — poorly done. So this week, in addition to the ‘Structures’ theme, I’m going to catch up on the posts from Weeks 1 and 2 that I missed. I’ve got it all sorted now, so it won’t happen again.

Post by: MoneyTastesBad
Town: Morgantown
Website: The 30-Year-Old Freshman

Last summer, my wife, daughter and I went on vacation to Cape Cod and Maine. We saw some beautiful sites. Nantucket Island, the sunset at Race Point which is the very end of the Cape. We walked on the National seashore. Bar Harbor and the rocky coasts and light houses of Maine, Acadia National Park, Cadillac Mountain. But nothing was as beautiful as the vision of heaven we saw when we came back home. These pictures were taken from the car on I-68 shortly after crossing into WV. Although we were in Preston County, I consider that to be part of the Greater Morgantown Metropolitan Area. And I consider Morgantown my home town.

Janis Bland, a Buckhannon blogger originally from Weston, has published her “My Town” post at her blog, Juanuchis’ Way. It’s a 19-photo tour of Weston that shows some of the amazing architecture the town has to offer, including, of course, the famous Weston State Hospital. Be sure to stop by and check it out!

Post by: Bryan Stealey
Town: Morgantown
Website: Reversing the Numbness

Morgantown rules. We have a vibrant music scene, a thriving arts community, a diverse population, and collegiate sports teams that are firmly planted on the national radar. Not only are we known by football and basketball fans, but Morgantown is also world-renowned in motocross circles, believe it or not. We have cool neighborhoods, museums, famous glass companies, cutting-edge medical facilities, growing industry that employs thousands of people, a happening downtown, dozens of local shops, bistros, coffee shops and bars, a great rails-to-trails systems, a new Wharf District with an amphitheater that features live music and family movies, mountain-bike trails, rivers to ride, rocks to climb, and so much more. Morgantown has really got it going on.

I’m not anti-growth or anything, but I do have to wonder just how far it’s going to go. Sure, we’ve got all that cool stuff I mentioned, but the strip malls are coming in full force, too (some of them in ridiculous places), and an overabundance of national chains are coming along with them. It’s simply remarkable how much construction is going on in this town. As the shopping centers grow, so do houses, condos and apartments. Hundreds and maybe thousands of new homes and units are underway. If you shoot a shotgun randomly in the air — please don’t — a pellet is bound to come down on something that looks like this:

Morgantown Row Houses

From that vantage point, if you turn 45 degrees to the right, you’ll see this:

Another Morgantown Apartment Building Complex

This is happening everywhere here, and it’s not just limited to condos and apartments. Housing developments are also spreading like wild fire, from starter homes to high-end McMansions. I live in a Cheat Lake neighborhood that was built in the ’80s, and builders keep surprising me by finding new places to put houses up in the development.

How is all of this going to end? What will happen to all of the older places where people used to live? Will we really get enough new residents to fill up all of these new buildings? How can we make sure our roads will handle all of this new traffic? Our arteries are already clogged — are we headed for a heart attack?

I don’t know. But if you’re one the many who are moving to Morgantown, know that you don’t have to move into a cookie-cutter subdivision with a nifty view of Interstate 79. There are other options, like this, the single coolest building in town:

The Good Council Friary

That’s right, the Good Council Friary is for sale, and if you have a cool $2.8 mil burning a hole in your pocket, it can be yours, all yours. How cool is this place? On a rainy day you can almost imagine yourself happening upon it after a long trudge through moors of Scotland. I wanted to get up close to shoot a photo of the hand-carved stone it’s constructed of, but I decided instead to heed the ‘No Trespassing’ signs. Though I have to think they would have forgiven me for trespassing against them.

Post By: Matt Ware
Town: Kingwood

I was raised in Kingwood, which is about 45 minutes south of Morgantown. Aside from having the state’s second largest festival (the Buckwheat Festival) behind the State Fair, there’s not much going on in Kingwood.

Luckily I had very adventurous and motivated grandparents and parents. I remember from a very young age going on long trips in the summer with my grandparents, camping at the many beautiful spots in the Mountain State and beyond. Coming from such a small, slow town, this travel gave me a constant itch to keep moving. More and more my “hometown” became a home base where I would rest between destinations. Here’s a handful of photos of some of the locations I used to frequent as a kid on jaunts from my home base.

Post by: The Dalai Mama
Town: Morgantown
Website: Chez Mama

This is my first post here at PWV, and I look forward to becoming a part of this blog. My town is currently Morgantown, and it has been for nearly 16 years now. I spent my first 17 years in Petersburg. I spent nearly every minute there wishing I was somewhere else. It is a beautiful town surrounded by mountains. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I just always felt like I needed to live in a place that offered a little more diversity.

I decided on WVU for college, and while I liked Morgantown during college, I didn’t plan on making it a permanent home. As a matter of fact, I’d always planned on leaving WV. The thought of that now is actually frightening to me. I absolutely love West Virginia, and can’t imagine raising my children anywhere else.

Well, I obviously never left Morgantown! I met my husband (Bryan/SleekPelt) while I was still in college. Shortly after, he pretty much landed a dream job here. Dream jobs are hard to come by in WV. So, here we are.

Anyway, since I love cooking (and food), I am going to write about some of the wonderful, local options we have here in Morgantown. For the last several years, we have bought a CSA share from Evans Knob Farm. Evans Knob is located in Bruceton Mills, about 30 miles from Morgantown. From late May to early October, we get a weekly bounty of fresh, organic vegetables. Evans Knob is certainly one of the few (if not only) USDA certified organic farms in WV. USDA certification is a process that takes years, and much hard work. The Evans’ are dedicated to their work while also practicing their farming in a way that is safe for the environment. I admire that immensely.

A few years ago, Morgantown finally got it together and organized a nice farmer’s market. Other towns in WV have really nice, big markets with such variety. That is definitely enviable, but what I love about the Morgantown Farmer’s Market, is that all products sold there must be produced within 50 miles. That’s truly locally produced! The market starts in just over three weeks. I can’t even say how much I’m looking forward to that! Much of the produce there is grown without pesticides or added chemicals. I think all of the meat sold there is grass-fed and hormone/anit-biotic free. We really are lucky to have options like that available locally. In many urban (and even some rural) areas in the U.S., you just wouldn’t be able to find fruit, veggies, meat and eggs that were essentially raised in your backyard. Just one of the many wonderful things about West Virginia!

Post By: Rebecca Burch
Town: Spencer
Website: Carpe You Some Diem

I feel sort of schizophrenic, because I am very much at home in both Charleston and Spencer WV, which are like two totally different worlds. I grew up in Belle, near Charleston, so I spent a lot of time in downtown Charleston as a kid. Now I work there but live in Spencer, which is very rural and kind of isolated. So I’m submitting two photos, if that’s OK — one of each of my “towns.”

The first one is “Livestock Market, Spencer WV.” I took this photo during a beautiful golden sunset while checking out this old livestock market. I think it’s still in use, although it has sort of an eerie “abandoned building” feel when it’s empty… which seems to be most of the year

Livestock Market: Spencer, WV

At the Foot of the Bridge

Check out more of Rebecca’s posts at Carpe You Some Diem.