CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- I pound these keys several hours after completing my first trip on the West Virginia Turnpike since the new toll increase took effect -- a voyage that left me with a little less change than usual to contribute to the office vending machines for cellophane-wrapped column fuel.

But I'm not really complaining.

I began the journey by getting off the Turnpike at Chelyan to bypass the Sharon Toll Plaza by driving a section of Cabin Creek Road. I made the detour not to protest the increased tolls, but because I am a tightwad by nature. The Sharon bypass only costs a few minutes of time, and I have routinely bypassed it, when not traveling on official company business, for decades.

When I returned to the Turnpike, I paid the $2 toll at the Pax Toll Plaza rather than make another diversion along the secondary road that follows Paint Creek between Mossy and Pax. You can't be in a hurry to make this detour, particularly in winter, but if you've got the time, it's a pretty drive, with lots of whitewater and deep, inviting pools shaded by giant rhododendron and hemlocks. But this trip, I didn't have the time.

Skinflint though I am, I didn't really mind paying the extra 75 cents to travel from Pax to Ghent and points south. The recently retired toll rate of $1.25 per plaza had been in effect since 1981, back when much of Turnpike was, as its signs informed first-time travelers, a "modern two-lane highway," despite the fact that every other toll road of that era had at least four lanes.

The old "modern" Turnpike, with its occasional passing lanes, had to have been an improvement over the road it replaced, but as West Virginia's equivalent of a superhighway, it was an embarrassment. Charging people $3.75 to drive the length of the mostly two-lane road added insult to injury.

Speaking of injuries, they were abundant on the old road, which was pretty unforgiving for aggressive drivers accustomed to four-lane divided highways.

The Turnpike has come a long way since 1981, when the last toll increase before last week's toll hike took effect. For more than two decades, I'd been paying the same fee to travel the four-lane, divided highway incarnation with rest areas, visitor centers and, yes, Tamarack, as I did to travel the old amenity-free West Virginia Treacherous Pathway, as the late, great Sunday Gazette-Mail columnist B.S. Palausky called the toll road.

In the late 1940s, when the Turnpike was in its conceptual stage, one plan called for building it between Princeton and Wheeling. But the high cost of that alignment made planners downscale the road, making it run from Princeton to Parkersburg, and then, finally, from Princeton to Charleston.

I'll let minds greater than mine decide whether all Turnpike toll revenue collected over the years should have gone toward paying off construction bonds and doing away with the tolls instead of paying for Tamarack and creating an economic development fund.

I'm just glad whoever was in charge decided not to build the Turnpike between Princeton and Wheeling, as initially considered.

Having the world's first one-lane toll road would have been really embarrassing.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- I pound these keys several hours after completing my first trip on the West Virginia Turnpike since the new toll increase took effect -- a voyage that left me with a little less change than usual to contribute to the office vending machines for cellophane-wrapped column fuel.

But I'm not really complaining.

I began the journey by getting off the Turnpike at Chelyan to bypass the Sharon Toll Plaza by driving a section of Cabin Creek Road. I made the detour not to protest the increased tolls, but because I am a tightwad by nature. The Sharon bypass only costs a few minutes of time, and I have routinely bypassed it, when not traveling on official company business, for decades.

When I returned to the Turnpike, I paid the $2 toll at the Pax Toll Plaza rather than make another diversion along the secondary road that follows Paint Creek between Mossy and Pax. You can't be in a hurry to make this detour, particularly in winter, but if you've got the time, it's a pretty drive, with lots of whitewater and deep, inviting pools shaded by giant rhododendron and hemlocks. But this trip, I didn't have the time.

Skinflint though I am, I didn't really mind paying the extra 75 cents to travel from Pax to Ghent and points south. The recently retired toll rate of $1.25 per plaza had been in effect since 1981, back when much of Turnpike was, as its signs informed first-time travelers, a "modern two-lane highway," despite the fact that every other toll road of that era had at least four lanes.

The old "modern" Turnpike, with its occasional passing lanes, had to have been an improvement over the road it replaced, but as West Virginia's equivalent of a superhighway, it was an embarrassment. Charging people $3.75 to drive the length of the mostly two-lane road added insult to injury.

Speaking of injuries, they were abundant on the old road, which was pretty unforgiving for aggressive drivers accustomed to four-lane divided highways.

The Turnpike has come a long way since 1981, when the last toll increase before last week's toll hike took effect. For more than two decades, I'd been paying the same fee to travel the four-lane, divided highway incarnation with rest areas, visitor centers and, yes, Tamarack, as I did to travel the old amenity-free West Virginia Treacherous Pathway, as the late, great Sunday Gazette-Mail columnist B.S. Palausky called the toll road.

In the late 1940s, when the Turnpike was in its conceptual stage, one plan called for building it between Princeton and Wheeling. But the high cost of that alignment made planners downscale the road, making it run from Princeton to Parkersburg, and then, finally, from Princeton to Charleston.

I'll let minds greater than mine decide whether all Turnpike toll revenue collected over the years should have gone toward paying off construction bonds and doing away with the tolls instead of paying for Tamarack and creating an economic development fund.

I'm just glad whoever was in charge decided not to build the Turnpike between Princeton and Wheeling, as initially considered.

Having the world's first one-lane toll road would have been really embarrassing.