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Traveling U.S. 460 in our fair state is one of my favorite things to do.

I've always maintained that our local stretch of 460 between Christiansburg and Elliston is one of the prettiest drives on the planet, especially in fall. And taking 460 East to Virginia Beach from here allows you to experience each of Virginia's geographical regions -- ridge and valley, piedmont, tidewater, coastal -- with singularly delightful glimpses of rural landscapes and small towns.

Lately I've experienced a western leg of this venerable road, which for me has been the one less traveled.

Our son, a huge fan of "Rocket Boys" and others of Homer Hickam's works, has long wanted to see the author's West Virginia hometown of Coalwood. This year when he actually asked to visit there for his birthday, we decided not to delay the trip to such a nearby destination any longer.

Anyone who has crested Brush and Gap mountains on 460 can attest to the breathtaking beauty of Giles County, showcased so well by that drive.

But I had forgotten, not having traveled farther than Pembroke in a while, how it just keeps coming the farther west you go, culminating in the dramatic views at Narrows.

Of course, you're also in for a ringside view of several man-made intrusions on the magnificent landscape -- the Glen Lyn power plant, the ash piles on the New, the Celanese industrial complex and the ever-present rail lines.

In the vicinity of Bluefield, however, the topography dramatically changes -- no more ridges and valleys to provide orderly courses for highways or grand vistas of layered peaks. The mountains become disassociated like choppy water, giving the road no choice but to climb and drop repeatedly. Time to break out the Dramamine.

Leaving 460, we took several other state roads to reach Coalwood. Many of the little burgs we passed through are recognizable place names from Hickam's stories.

And you really do need to go there to appreciate what it's like: unforgiving tall, tall slopes forming narrow valleys with watercourses at their bottoms, creating the narrowest of level flood plains. Creeks share these (sometimes with disastrous results) with settlements and roadways; roads literally can be spitting distance from front doors as well as from a tumbling creek, now brimming from recent rain.

What's most striking is the limited amount of sky that you can see from the valley floors.

We all wondered if we could get used to that.

Coalwood is mostly populated now by retired miners, and there's really not a great deal to see other than their small clapboard houses.

We didn't know what to expect in the way of "home of Homer Hickam" attractions, even after checking the town's Web site. Some authentic sites of events in the books can be spotted readily enough -- the machine shop, the clubhouse, Hickam's old elementary school, and the church; except for the church, all are boarded up and in disrepair.

But in a way it was gratifying to find that the town has not capitalized on their famous son's fame. True to its character as depicted by Hickam, Coalwood has respectfully named streets for noted personages in the books, and holds a home-grown October Sky festival in the fall, featuring a rocket contest and antique car show.

Our son wanted to press on to the town of War, where Homer went to high school, to experience his bus route over the mountain situated between the two towns.

After traveling that particularly tortuous road, we were all a bit green and found it difficult to imagine making such a commute twice a day by school bus, especially in difficult weather.

The Coalwood mine, which employed the town, is no longer in operation, but we passed several active coal mines along our journey, complete with tipples and coal train loaders -- man-made contraptions of a type we're not so used to seeing in our own mountain settings.

I had to remind myself more than once that we were only a few hours from home, not in another country altogether.

And so we accomplished a simple drive through Coalwood and vicinity; no stops, souvenirs, guided tours. Far from disappointed, however, we were quite satisfied to discover that our impressions from the books are highly compatible with what we found.

Coalwood is the genuine article.

Susan Stevens Huckle lives in Blacksburg and is a technical writer at Virginia Tech. You can e-mail her at ssh_nrj@hotmail.com.