Stories abound of GPS users sitting in their car on a remote mountaintop glaring at their phone as it sings: “You have now arrived at your destination.” Given the hills and hollows of West Virginia, GPS bloopers are a common occurrence.

My friend Randy lives in a hollow populated with six or seven mobile homes ten miles outside of the village of Mill Creek. At least once a week, he says, a shiny rental car pulls up to his porch and the driver asks directions to Kumbrabow National Forest. Just steps from his house, a small dirt road will get you there. If you’re on foot. However, GPS does not understand these nuances.

I tend to shun GPS and on both dirt and secondary roads reach instead for a paper map, the traveler’s tool of yore. Perhaps I was caving in to modern ways when I set out to Buckhannon Stockyards west of Elkins WV. I studied Google Maps and directions a bit to familiarize myself with my journey ahead of time and planned to pull over and consult the program again as I got closer. 

All was going well until a mile past the bustling town of Elkins. “No Service” my phone reported, a familiar phenomenon while traveling around WV. I’ll call and get directions, I thought. Being used to a constant flow of internet I forgot that no internet service also translates to no phone service.

I didn’t freak out instead I reverted back to ancient methods of communication from the Internet Before Time. I exited from the highway at Main Street just outside the town of Buckhannon. As I drove along it seemed like any Main Street, USA with the usual businesses of pre-big-box store days—an automotive supply shop, a pharmacy, and yes, a fish-and-tackle shop. Surely the owner there—a lover of outdoor sport and maybe big beef cattle—would know the whereabouts of Buckhannon Stockyard. The shop inside revealed one large room chuck full of sportsmen’s gear—fishing rods, lines, bait, jackets, boots. But the shop was empty, no proprietor in sight. This is not uncommon in WV—front doors wide open, no one inside. 

“Hallo, anyone here?” I hollered out.

A tall, barrel-chested man in a flannel shirt with a mask dangling round his neck appeared. 

“Yup, you’re almost there. Buckhannon Stockyard’s just a few miles other side of town.”

It was a left and a right, stay on Main Street through town (I jotted it down as he spoke) and a right turn at the convenience store. Once again, I was saved by the kindness of a stranger. And it was just as he had described. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled my Jeep alongside the jumbo pickup trucks and animal trailers into the parking lot of Buckhannon Stockyards. An animal auction was just about to get under way