Exploring New River Gorge

We started day 2 of our West Virginia adventures getting up around 8 or so. We got our free breakfast again before checking out. The hotel was nothing special, but the room was pretty big and was somewhere to sleep and watch the Steelers get beat by a last second field goal. Great. I had planned a route of places to go the night before, waterfalls, abandoned towns, etc. So I plugged the route in and we were on our way.

The first stop was the ghost town of Thurmond. I had been by it once going down the New River, so I couldn’t see much anything, and Kacie had never been there. It was a hike to get there, but we were going that way for our next night’s hotel in Beckley and the rest of the stops on day three were close, so this would be the longest drive of the day. It wasn’t bad and we started getting close around 11. Thurmond is now in New River Gorge National Park, which is the newest national park we have. Which was kind of nice since even the roads that Google said would be gravel and dirt were freshly paved. On the way in we stopped once or twice, the memorable one being a little waterfall called Dunloup Falls. You could see it right from the pull-off on the road, however, Kacie scaled the cliff to get better shots.

The road was nice right up until you approached the bridge over New River that takes you to Thurmond. This is a crazy bridge with two lanes, one for trains and one for cars. So the driving lane isn’t the widest, and it’s pretty much metal grates with some wood planks thrown in for kicks. It can hold a train though, so no big worry there. We crossed over the bridge and turned down to run parallel with the remnants of the town. Coincidentally a freight train was coming through as we pulled up. Kacie wanted to get a picture of the train so I told her to hop out right where we were. She did and just stared at me as I then parked about 10 feet from where I told her to get out. I figured she wouldn’t want to miss it. But it’s a freight train, so it proceeded to pass us by for the next 5 minutes. So we both got pictures and I got some video.

After the train was gone, we could hop over the tracks and explore. The town was big in the coal mining days, but shut down decades ago with most of West Virginia. A lot of people lived there while it was alive and a lot of money was made. It was a big town in it’s day. There was some story about a poker game that lasted a couple days along with others I was never interested in to remember. But if you care, there’s plenty of all that on the internet. Which turns out, a lot of people read. There were vehicles full of old people there as well, wondering around slowly and getting in our pictures. For whatever reason, a lot of them were amazed by the freight train going by, and then slowly disappeared once it was gone. To be fair, there’s not a ton to see here. There is a row of old buildings still there right beside the tracks, a bank, a couple houses, etc. They are kind of cool to see and take some pictures of, but it’s not a place you need to spend a lot of time at. We like that stuff, but the old people walk up and down the row of buildings and leave. Good.

While we were walking back down the row, because we also were walking up and down looking at buildings, another train came by, not as long and full of coal. That’s still a thing, just not nearly as prominent and way more efficient. We got some pictures of the engine on that one. Dad would’ve thought that was cool. There was never really a stop to the influx of old people, so there were still plenty around when we tried to get a better look at the old bridge we came over on. Some old guy had wondered onto it even though it wasn’t really wide enough to talk and drive on, as was to be expected. We watched a few vehicles slowly try to get past him as he got in the way of Kacie’s pictures. He eventually woddled off and I believe she got a few good ones. It was a cool old bridge.

We also saw this cool plane…and a tiny sliver of the moon

The newer train station/gift shop was closed because of the shutdown, I think. I’ll explain that one later. So we had covered what we wanted to there and were ready to move on. I had planned on taking a single lane dirt road to our next stop, a grist mill about 10 miles away. Since it was barely a road up and down a couple mountains, it would still take about an hour to get there. The road was across the tracks on the town side and went straight up a mountain. The thing about it was, there was a sign that said no outlet. Google and by reading google, I was under the impression that not only would that road take us to the mill, but it would then connect to other roads that would take us to our other stops. None of our stops were that close together, so I started to worry that if we did take that road, and something bad had happened to the road that would make us turn around, we would not be able to get to see what we wanted to see. So we looked at google again and found that it would only take an extra 5 minutes or something to go the whole way around to the mill on highways and numbered routes. I guess they figured on the mountain road you’d be doing like 15 mph, where the highways down here are mostly 70. Since we had already done enough off-roading to hold us for a while the day before, and we did want to see the rest of the list, we decided to go the highway route. We didn’t think about it at the time, but this would also drive over the New River Gorge bridge and be able to stop at the overlook. This was significant since Bridge Day was the next day and we would be gone after that. So it all worked out. And showed us how insane Bridge Day would be on Saturday. We’ll still probably try to go, but we’ll gauge what we see then. So we drove over the bridge, which isn’t itself that interesting. You know you’re high up and crossing a bridge, but you can’t really see anything. Just over the bridge is one of the New River Gorge visitor centers. Now I understood that the Thurmond stuff was closed because of the shutdown and it’s a national park, so federal, but so is the New River Gorge stuff, and there were a lot of park rangers working, but maybe because of Bridge Day. I hope they weren’t working for free, but maybe. I believe this one is pretty much just for the bridge and the lookout for it, so it makes sense for the weekend we’re in. There are some cool activities around for the right people. You can walk across the bridge on a walkway underneath it, or walk down to the bottom and look up at it. There are also a few nice lookouts to see the bridge from a little bit further away and take in the size of it. Tomorrow is Bridge Day, and on that one day every year people also jump off of it and repel down it, and you can watch them do it. They also shut the bridge down for six hours and up to 100,000 people wonder around it and buy crap from like 150 different vendors. That’s what wbre might try to go to. We didn’t plan that, or even know it was this weekend, but we’re here. But I digress, Kacie got some cool shots of the bridge from the overlook and we jumped back into the Bronco to go to the mill.

We didn’t look up a lot about the mill, but thought it looked cool. It was only a short drive from the bridge visitor’s center so we got there pretty quickly. It was a cool mill and we wondered around it for a bit getting some pictures. A bunch of people there too. I think a lot of people were around because of Bridge Day, more than a normal October Friday, but maybe not. They are a state park so the shop was open. We each bought a shirt and a sticker. The only money we spent so far other than hotels and food, unusual for us. Unfortunately, neither of us had any internet here, so we took off to our next stop half blind. We knew about where it was, but not 100%.

On the way Kacie did get internet back, we always had GPS, so we knew where we were going. Hemlock Hollow Falls. It was just off some back road wrapping around the east side of the Gorge park. I knew we were close, and we were talking and paying the best of attention, and all of a sudden I hear Kacie say there it is. The pull-off was on the other side of the road and she said this about 25 feet before we passed it. No one was around so I let off the gas and cut the wheel to the left quick. Little did I know the pull-off where I hit it had about a 10 inch drop. The Bronco took it well but it was quite a jolt as I slammed on the brakes into the gravel. We were jostled but both laughing. The waterfall was cool, but down a fairly steep hollow that we didn’t want to climb out of. Kacie still got some cool pictures even though from where we could easily get it was hidden behind trees. This was a quickie so we were ready to take off again. But, West Virginia has worse reception than backwoods Colorado and South Dakota combined. We again at least knew what direction to go, so off we went. (As it turns out Kacie did not get the best pictures…sorry)

And again, we got internet back on the way to Sandstone Falls, the largest waterfall on the New River in WV. This is on the far south end of New River National Park, about an hour away from Beckley. There is a boardwalk that takes you out to the river, just downstream of the falls. This isn’t your typical waterfall, it’s more a collection of falls all across the New River in this spot. As you walk along the boardwalk, there are various places to stop and see the more minor falls on the way to the more central, and impressive, falls. We just went as far as we could on the boardwalk and stopped at these smaller ones on the way back. At the end of the boardwalk there is a viewing platform that gives you a good view, but you can also leave the boardwalk and go right out to the actual river jumping from giant rock to giant rock. It’s a cool thing just to be in the middle of the river looking up at the falls. These falls are big enough that you get the “spray” from them like you see on the big ones. Unfortunately, since it was the end of the day and we were on the east side of the falls looking west, the sun was slamming us right in the face, and it was a crystal clear day down here. So the pictures we got won’t be the best, even though I’m sure Kacie’s pictures will still be nice, I haven’t seen them yet. With my more limited photography skills, mine are mostly blown out. But whatever, it was nice just to be hanging out down there by the river. We hit a couple smaller falls on the way back to the Bronco and started to head to Beckly.

For this third night, I got us in to Comfort Inn. It’s pretty nice. We weren’t looking to be fancy with dinner tonight, we figured tomorrow night could be fancier since we’ll be in a fancier hotel. There is a Wendy’s right beside the hotel, so we walked over there and brought some burgers and chicken nuggets back. Tomorrow the plan is to get up and head to Bridge Day. We’ll see how crazy it is and gauge if we want to go then. I guess you’ll find out tomorrow…