A West Virginia family’s twenty-minute trip home became an overnight tour of the Appalachian region Sunday after the father announced he knew “a pretty way to go.”
Kevin Hensley, 45, made the announcement while passing the turn that would have taken his wife and children directly to their house, where they had groceries, clean bathrooms, and plans.
“I thought we’d look at the leaves,” Hensley said. “You only get them like this once a year.”
His wife, Melissa, said they had already been looking at leaves.
“We live in the woods,” she said. “There are leaves at the house.”
According to passengers, the drive began pleasantly enough, with sunshine lighting the hillsides and Hensley pointing out several trees everyone could already see.
The first indication of trouble came when he slowed beside a gravel road and said, “I wonder if this still goes through.”
Melissa immediately asked him to define “still.”
Hensley declined, citing an upcoming turn.
Within thirty minutes, the family had passed a church, an abandoned store, and a house Hensley believed belonged to somebody his father used to work with.
He stopped outside the house long enough to determine it probably wasn’t.
“I remember a porch,” he said.
The house had a porch.
“Different porch.”
The family’s navigation app initially suggested turning around, then offered a longer route, then began displaying the vehicle in a featureless gray area that Melissa described as “the phone washing its hands of us.”
Hensley maintained that the app did not know about a connecting road.
“It comes out right over here,” he said.
Asked where “here” was, he gestured through the windshield.
Their oldest daughter said this was when she began rationing her battery.
At the first scenic overlook, Hensley took several photographs of the mountains and one of his family.
In the family photograph, everyone is looking toward the truck.
“We’ve got frozen stuff,” Melissa reminded him.
“It’s cool out,” he replied.
“The pizza is in the truck, Kevin. It ain’t on the overlook.”
Hensley agreed to head home after one more stop, a phrase passengers would hear six additional times.
The second overlook offered what Melissa called “the same mountain from its other side.”
The third was not officially an overlook. Hensley had simply found a place wide enough to pull off.
“You can see forever from here,” he said.
His younger daughter asked whether forever included their house.
The trip became more complicated after Hensley attempted to follow a road he remembered traveling with his uncle in 1996.
That road ended at a locked gate.
Hensley got out and inspected it.
“What were you checking?” Melissa asked. “Whether it respected your memories?”
He returned to the truck and reported that somebody had put up a gate.
The family confirmed they had followed that development.
After backing approximately a quarter-mile to a place where he could turn around, Hensley announced that he knew another way.
Nobody responded.
“I took that as agreement,” he later told reporters.
By evening, the family had purchased gas, eaten supper at a place Hensley remembered under a different name, and stopped to photograph a barn Melissa had been assured would be “worth coming up through here for.”
It was too dark to see the barn.
Hensley described its general appearance.
“It’s red.”
The family eventually reached a familiar highway shortly after midnight, at which point Hensley became concerned that taking it would undo much of the progress they had made.
Melissa told him to undo it.
Their final delay occurred when Hensley recognized a crossroads and insisted they were only fifteen minutes from home.
He was correct about the fifteen minutes.
He had been at the same crossroads six hours earlier.
The family arrived in their driveway Monday morning with enough time for Hensley to shower, change clothes, and leave for work.
The groceries were carried inside in silence.
Melissa said the frozen pizza would now be prepared according to whatever instructions applied to dough.
Despite the extended travel time, Hensley declared the outing a success.
“Kids need to get off their phones and see something,” he said.
Both children confirmed they had seen enough.
At press time, Hensley was leaving work and considering a different way home.
He wanted to see that barn in daylight.
The Holler Herald — West Virginia’s Least Reliable News Source.
