Spent the weekend at The Vandalia Fiddle Gathering in Charleston, WV. An old friend was told by her mom as a child, and young adult, that she had no musical talent. Turns out her grandfather played the fiddle and her passion to learn and play was unstoppable. That was a couple of decades ago. Today she is an accomplished musician who plays at festivals and gatherings throughout Northern California.

This summer she headed for the East Coast to the capital of WV to join hundreds of other fiddlers and musicians at a three-day music love fest. Picture this. A stately Southern building sits atop a hill, flanked by green, with a sprawl of musicians blanketing around it. Fiddle music everywhere. At night we descended on the town, which offered surprisingly good pizza, and a host of other options other than the usual barbecued pork sandwiches. Such a chummy, outgoing group, those fiddlers.

Spent the first night in a Fayetteville cabin about an hour from Charleston. Dozens of adventure lovers head there for white water rafting - a great place for the summer ski bums to find more danger thrills. There’s not much to the town but we did eat good Mexican food in a restaurant called Don Rizo Mexican Kitchen and Cantina on the main street in town.

The owner joined us and told us how he had left home for many years, living mostly in San Francisco,. But the lure of WV was too strong so he brought Mexican food to the town where he grew up.

The entire trip John Denver’s song “Take Me Home Country Roads”, ran through my mind. The line “West Virginia, Mountain Mama” followed by the song title would not quit. On the ride home trying to avoid VA holiday traffic, the GPS took us through western Maryland. I sang along to Spotify, remembering the rest of the words.