Day 12: January 2, 2013
Mounds, Moths, & Bridges
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I did a quick web search for breakfast in Charleston and Suzi's came up high on the list. It wasn't too far away so that's where I headed. For some reason I expected to find a quaint little place with a smiling Suzi dashing around to keep everyone's coffee full. What I found was a very busy independent McDonald's style operation serving quality fast food. There is a Suzi. Susan Cowie and husband Jim own the place. There were two Suzi's restaurants for awhile. Although it was doing well, the Cowies closed it in 2011 because, as Jim said then, "...you're better off to do a few things well than a lot of things not so well." The drive-thru and order-at-the-counter operation definitely resemble the chains and so does the menu. The prices are certainly competitive. My bacon & egg sandwich with coffee and hash browns was $4.91. But the food quality is a notch or two above the chains plus it's a locally owned one of a kind.

Suzi's has nothing to do with Indian mounds other than being directly across the street from one. I strolled over after my meal to take my first mound picture of the day.

I started home by crossing the Kanawha River on the 1930 Patrick Street Bridge and working my way to US-35. That involved crossing the Kanawha again -- on I-64 and the Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge -- but I didn't get a picture. I followed US-35 and the Kanawha River for about forty miles before crossing it again to reach Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That was on the green bridge which DeLorme calls the Shadle Bridge but Bridgehunter simply calls the Kanawha River Bridge. The last picture is of the Silver Memorial Bridge which replaced the 1928 Silver Bridge after its 1967 collapse. I crossed it into Ohio after my Point Pleasant visit.
I made the short detour into Point Pleasant specifically to see Mothman. I actually saw just his statue, of course. Mothman himself hasn't been seen for more that forty years. The statue is right across the street from the 1901 Lowe Hotel where I'd like to stay someday. Then I could see the statue illuminated by that spotlight. Bet that looks cool.
Although I've passed nearby several times, I'd never actually seen the Bob Evans Farm. Today I drove the couple of miles off of US-35 to take a look. The 1820s brick "homestead" is where Bob and Jewell Evans lived when he was the "farmer down on the farm" stirring tubs of sausage by hand.
Here's a place, also just a couple of miles off of US-35, that I have seen before. The Mound City Group National Monument was established in 1923 and it is now part of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. There is a small but informative museum and lots of mounds. I went to the edge of Mound City but just looked at the snow covered "city" without actually entering. However, a little snow did not deter a family I'd met in the museum from heading out to do some real exploring as I left.
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