scenic nutter fort, west virginia

West Virginia, like most states, is just a-brimming with intriguing town names. You could, for example, live in Mink Shoals or Big Chimney! Though our favorite city in WV was by far Charleston (we even took the scenic route past their fine arts center when I blatantly ignored the GPS and decided to drive past I-64), we also had a chance to discover a little more of another West Virginian municipality known as Nutter Fort.

On Saturday, as we drove north, we passed the exit for Nutter Fort and I told Holly that one day, I would live in Nutter Fort. My kids would go to Nutter Fort Elementary School and we would attend the Nutter Fort First Baptist Church. And we would have a dairy farm, and we would make butter, and it would be called NUTTER BUTTER. It goes without saying that we were already a bit punchy at this point.

So on Sunday, as we drove south searching, PLEADING TO ALLAH for a Dairy Queen to rise up out of the mountains, we nearly lost our shit when we realized that a DQ was waiting for us in none other than Nutter Fort, West Virginia. We had been questing for a Blizzard since Maryland, knowing that we'd seen one on an exit sign on Saturday. But that mystical DQ was never to be found, not even through the whole of Pennsylvania.

During our trip I helped Holly in her studying efforts for the GRE, mostly by going over word definitions and synonyms. Somewhere in Pennsylvania on Sunday, I'd say around hour two of the desperate DQ search, I began using the words in a story about this quest. In the story, our car broke down and we had to ford a river -- ford being a GRE word that no one in our generation will EVER forget thanks to Oregon Trail and its many-a-dead oxen -- and we discovered an island on the other side that had a DQ, but also a feisty indigenous people. First we made peace with them, then they made us their queens, then there was a little rabble rousing from the locals and we decided it would be easier just to kill them all. And THEN we realized we killed all the DQ employees, too, so there was nobody left to make us our damn Blizzards. Then we forded the river again, realized our car had just been out of gas, filled it up and made it to the next exit, where there was, in fact, a Dairy Queen. The End.

ANYWHO.

So we finally see the glorious DQ logo shining at us from the exit sign, and we pull off into Nutter Fort only to see an arrow pointing to our right and the number 3.0. Who in their right mind thinks THREE MILES is OFF AN EXIT!? We are shocked at the gall of the people of Nutter Fort, but at this point we are committed. And so we drive. Through the rolling mountainy roads of West Virginia, into and out of civilization a few times and finally we arrive at the Dairy Queen. After relieving ourselves in the Nutter Fort DQ ladies', we get in line behind some kind of corn pone Cleetus who was probably ordering one of those freaky looking grilled cheeses. This was when we noticed that everything in the Nutter Fort DQ cost about seventeen thousand times what it would cost in a normal DQ. Being the HUGE nerds that we are, we had a quick discussion about the principles of supply and demand, using examples to illustrate our points -- like the multitude of Asian ladies in New York City willing to paint your toe nails, thus making the mani/pedi available on the cheap cheap -- before ordering our Thin Mint Blizzards with EXTRA Thin Mint and then forking over our first born children for the frosty treats.

The next 25 exits ALL seemed to have DQs that probably would've been two seconds from the highway, but by that stage we were high on Thin Mints and unable to process any emotion other than OHMYGODMINTYCHOCOLATE. Yes, that is an emotion. It happens to be one of my favorites.

cheers,
elizabeth