travel dates: June, 2024
Our big theme for this year’s trip was “Canadian Cities,” and, as you might already know, New River Gorge National Park is not a Canadian city. But it is America’s newest national park and happens to be located in West Virginia, one of the few states we still needed to check off on our map of states visited…so between those things and the fact that is was on the way-ish to our Canadian Cities route, adding a stop was pretty much a no-brainer.
We only had two nights/one full day to spend here, so this was a surface-scratching kind of trip, but we really enjoyed what we did see, both of the park and the gateway town of Fayetteville and felt like the things we did made for a pretty good intro.
First, I’ll say that we stayed at Bear Mountain Cabins and Campground and really liked it, but, somehow, I neglected to take a single picture! So anyway, this is a great campground just a couple of minutes outside of downtown Fayetteville and about a mile down the road from the national park. Private, wooded sites…we had site 25, and thought it was awesome–tons of space and easy to back into.
It was very hot for our single full day (in mid June), so we made a heroic effort to get out of the trailer early so we could get in a hike before things got unbearable. Our hike of choice was the Endless Wall Trail; we made it to the parking lot at around 9:30 and snagged the last spot (although word is there’s another lot down the road if that one is full). The total trail length is 2.2 miles each way, but a lot of people (including us) turn around at Diamond Point to make for a moderate 2 mile roundtrip hike with a great view at the turnaround point.
This is your typical east coast hike, which is to say you hike for awhile through the woods and then you get a big payoff. The through the woods part is some elevation change, some little wooden bridges over picturesque streams…all that kind of thing. It was lovely.
(incidentally, we had only August and Abe with us on this trip, for the first time (sniff). Ari was working full time back home for most of the trip, and Milo was off doing assorted music programs).
The “endless wall” referenced in the name of the trail is this big ol’ wall of rock, which is popular with climbers:
The drop offs at this overlook freaked Abe out at first, but he gradually found his courage enough to venture all the way to like….30 feet? away from the edge:
Then we went back the way we’d come, but it’s possible to go the rest of the way to that alternate parking lot and turn around or, I believe, to walk along the road at that point to make a loop.
The other big National Park thing we did was spend some time at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center. The park has a couple of different visitor centers, but this is one where you get the iconic views of the gorge and the bridge stretching across it. There are a few exhibits here and a rather dated (from back when the park was only a recreation area) short video. And, of course, you can pick up a Junior Ranger book here:
The bridge views are the star of the show here, though. There’s a nice view from the deck in the back of the visitor’s center, but you also want to go outside and follow the trail around the building to get closer. We saw a friendly deer wearing a reflective bandana on the way:
I don’t know who put the bandana on the deer.
There’s an easy to get to overlook higher up and then you can take the stairs down for a closer look. My notes say that I think there are 178 stairs. Sounds about right:
At the bottom, I played around with changing out my lenses, because I still, after 2 years, have never quite gotten the hang of when to use my 55-200mm lens. So here’s the bridge with the 18-55 kit lens:
And here it is from the same location with Dave standing in front of it:
Like I think it’s good when, say, you have a mountain far away in the distance, and you want to take a picture of something in the foreground but not have the mountain look like a tiny dot far away. But what else? For bridges from a small viewing platform maybe not so much because it’s hard to get far enough back from whatever you’re trying to take a picture of. Anyway.
So there are, of course, tons of things to do at New River Gorge that we didn’t get to: there are scenic drives and more hikes, rafting is big, climbing, etc. A tour company will take you on a walk (with harnesses!) across the bridge, underneath the road for a “bridge walk” and that’s very popular and also terrifying-looking.
But looking back, it seems that the primary thing we did in the area was…eat. We somehow managed to eat out three times in the 36 hours or so that we spent here. Fayetteville is a super cute little town with a lot of great restaurant options. The night we arrived we ate downtown at Secret Sandwich Society, which features a nice patio and big variety of creative sandwiches named after presidents and other historical figures. Sadly for us, the AC was not especially powerful, though:
After our hike, we got brunch at Cathedral Cafe, which I was very excited about because it’s a restaurant/coffee shop in an old church, and that sort of thing delights me. Both the setting and the food lived up to expectations:
Finally, we grabbed dinner and beer at The Freefolk Brewery, just outside of town. We really liked the beer and the atmosphere. Food options were limited (mostly gyros and salads), but Abe was a big fan of the basket of fries covered in cheese that we ordered.
Next up: we finally see the Canadian side of Niagara Falls!
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I’ll stay back with Abe, thanks.