Almost Heaven, West Virginia

I was awake first and packed our lunch for our hike. Everyone else got up on their own and had breakfast. Everyone had to pack their own hiking backpack with whatever they thought they would need (swimsuit, towel to sit on or dry off with, etc). I packed waters, lunch and bug spray and we were off.

The two places we wanted to visit were near each other (or so it seemed–more on that later) so we headed to the closer one first. It was the main overlook of the New River Gorge.

This one was steps from the parking lot so we left our backpacks and went to take in the view.

There was a playground there and we let the kids play for a while. At first the boys were playing king of the slide and not sharing. Then they invented a game where you had to answer a riddle and depending on how you answered you either went down the right or left slide (it was a double slide).

While the kids were playing Nole and I checked out the map to our chosen hiking path. It was right next to this place on the map but the problem was it was across the gorge. That meant back-tracking and going around.

Nole noticed a similarity in this maze on the playground equipment. I added the dots. We were the blue dot trying to get to the red dot.

The kids are old pros at car rides and after an hour (I know it says 43 minutes but Google is not good at estimating driving on back roads and we drive slow on the mountains), we arrived at the head of the hiking trail. This trail is about 5 miles long but we planned to go about half way and back to do a total of five miles.

We ate our lunch before going on our hike because it’s easier to carry it in our bellies than on out backs. We went down the first path to the creek that we saw.

Asa hopped across the creek using rocks right away but the rest of us aren’t as nimble or confident. It took a few tries but eventually all of us got across.

…and back across to the hiking path again. Then we continued on until we saw another path down to the creek. This one had a swimming hole in it. The water here was crystal clear and a pretty blue color. It was also ice cold but eventually Cal, Asa and I all got brave enough to go for a swim.

There were trout in the stream and we saw several people fly fishing in the creek. We saw one man catch a bass. There was also a spot where the butterflies were sunning themselves and licking salt off the rocks.

The boys skipped rocks along the creek and then we turned back and returned to the trail head.

We saw a giant millipede on our way back and chatted with a man who is also seeing the 50 states. He was originally from Australia and works remote while he travels.

When we left the trail, we went to Alderson for the largest 4th of July celebration in West Virginia. They were having some canoe races and a rubber duck race where they raffle off tickets, dump rubber ducks in the river and the one who crosses the finish line first wins $5000. Unfortunately, they were sold out of duck tickets when we got there. We stayed for a few canoe races. The most exciting was the 6 man because many of the canoes capsized.

We decided not to wait for the rubber duck race after all and went back to the Airbnb after meeting the “Mountain Man”.

When we got to the rental, someone tried to toss the keys and they slipped between the stairs of the front steps.

Cal found this praying mantis while we were searching for the keys.

After about a half hour, we retrieved the keys. At dark we heard some fireworks in the area so Asa and I went out to watch. There were many fireworks in the surrounding area. They were pretty large for ones just being set off by people in their yards. Then we noticed out neighbor was setting up some fireworks so we decided to stay and watch those. These babies were huge. After each one, the shells would hit the roofs and people watching. Most of the people watching didn’t seem to care–some observers were as close as 10 feet to where they were being set off but Asa and I kept scooting further and further away. Nole and Esme joined us for some of the fireworks too.