Billy Graham Library and Museum

 Left the motel headed for Charlotte and the Billy Graham Library and Museum which is 45 miles and one hour away....or so we thought!  The GPS showed several parts of the highway red which means heavy congestion.  It actually took us an hour and a half.  The traffic seemed worse than Atlanta.

We got to the gate ten minutes early and had to wait until 9:30 when the gate opened.  The upside was that we were number one when it opened.

  

The library was very well done and used technology to tell Billy Graham's story.

  This world globe was in the room which told about his worldwide ministry.

This room told about his ministry in the Communist countries like West Germany

.  This is a replica of the Berlin wall.  Below (using technology) shows an American soldier on guard booth at the wall..  

Billy Graham's casket was handmade by prisoners at Angola Prison in Louisiana.  The men who made the casket carved their names on the end of the casket

Scripture and quotes from Billy Graham were on the walls of the museum.  I especially liked this one.

This is the library/museum.  Entrance is at the foot of the cross.

The graves of Cliff Barrow and his wife Mary and George Beverly Shea.

The graves of Billy and Ruth Graham.

The grave of Billy Graham.

The grave of Ruth Bell Graham

This is the original house that Billy lives in when he was a child on his father's dairy farm.  It was moved to this location when the library/museum was planned.

It is a beautiful home.

Left Charlotte about noon headed for Hawk's Nest State Park in Wests Virginia.  We had to drive through the Western coroner of Virginia.

Beautiful Virginia.

West Virginia

West Virginia

Drive through two tunnels on I-77 North

Finally at 5:00 p.m.  we arrived at the lodge in which we will be spending two nights.

Above and below are views from the balcony of our room.  The room is small but very nice.  After we settled into the room, we had supper at the restaurant in the lodge.  Carol had ribs and I had meatloaf.  Both meals were very good.  It is a nice restaurant with tablecloths, cloth napkins, drinks served in stem glasses and a  beautiful view of the New River and gorge it runs through.  It is definitely not McDonalds!!

It began to rain in the night and this is the view we woke up to!  

We are not sure what we will do today because the rain will affect our plans.  We  had planned to take the bridge walk but the views from the bridge may be limited.  If the sky doesn't break, we may wait until tomorrow and try to take the walk before we leave this area for Kentucky..

This didn't get posted until Friday morning because I only had one bar of internet last night.  This morning I discovered that the lodge has internet and I was able to tap into their's...it is great.  It is very fast.  Even my laptop is faster...I can't explain that.