Charleston

We rolled into Charleston on a gray afternoon, the kind of soft Appalachian light that makes river towns look older than they are, and the first thing that caught us both off guard was the dome. The West Virginia State Capitol sits directly on the Kanawha River, its gilded cupola catching whatever sun manages to break through, taller by design than the dome in Washington, D.C. Lia, who had assumed we were simply stopping for gas and dinner between bigger destinations, revised her opinion within the hour.

The Capitol and the riverfront

We spent our first hours walking the Capitol grounds, where formal gardens slope down toward the water and the building itself — designed by Cass Gilbert, the architect behind the Woolworth Building in New York — feels almost too monumental for a state capital of this size. Below it, the Kanawha Boulevard riverwalk runs for miles along the water, joggers and fishermen sharing the same stretch of pavement, barges occasionally pushing coal or gravel downstream toward the Ohio. At golden hour we sat on a bench watching the dome catch fire in the last light, the river moving slow and brown beneath it.

Capitol Street and Appalachian food

Downtown, Capitol Street’s restored Art Deco storefronts house a cluster of local restaurants that quietly punch above their weight. We ate pepperoni rolls — the state’s beloved coal-mining-era snack, dough wrapped tight around spiced pepperoni — from a bakery that had been making them the same way for generations, then found a proper sit-down dinner of trout and ramps at a spot near the farmers market. Charleston has an unpretentious, hardworking character; conversations at the next table were about the legislature in session or the river levels, not tourism, which made us feel like guests rather than customers.

Getting There

Yeager Airport sits just a few minutes from downtown Charleston, perched dramatically on a leveled mountaintop with connections to major hubs like Charlotte, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. By car, Charleston sits at the crossroads of Interstates 64 and 77, about four hours from both Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, and roughly two and a half hours from Columbus, Ohio. Downtown is walkable once you’ve arrived, with the Capitol, riverfront, and Capitol Street shops all within easy reach of each other on foot.