West Virginia National Rivers

And first camping in West Virginia

Camping in Little Beaver State Park for 5 nights, giving us 4 days to (drive a lot, north & south, and)…

Visit and hike (~17 miles) in 3 new National Park Sites:

• New River Gorge National Park & Preserve (#325) protects a rugged, whitewater river flowing northward through deep canyons, among the oldest rivers on the continent. The park encompasses over 70,000 acres of land along the New River, rich in cultural and natural history. Visiting over 4 days, we drove over some “interesting bridges” and got to all 5 of the “Main Park Destinations”:
  • Sandstone Visitor Center, nearest open VC to us and “gateway to the southern portion of New River Gorge NP”. We started here to make plans, then drove south, up the river to Hinton, over the bridge and back north to…
  • Sandstone Falls, the largest waterfall on the New River, spans the river where it is 1500 feet wide. The river drops 10 to 25 feet.
  • Canyon Rim Visitor Center, at the north end, with the classic overlook of the New River Gorge Bridge, 178 steps down (and back up). The New River Gorge Bridge (completed October 1977) turned a 40-minute drive into less than a minute, removing the need to navigate down narrow mountain roads across an ancient river. 
  • Thurmond Historic District, once among the greatest railroad/coal mining towns along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway.
  • Grandview, just 15 minutes from our campsite, provides some of the most dramatic scenery found in the park. The main overlook is the highest point in the park, 1,400 feet above the river.

• Bluestone National Scenic River (#326), where a 10.5-mile section is preserved as a living landscape that provides an unspoiled experience for visitors and a haven for a variety of plants and animals. The river and the rugged and ancient gorge it has carved is a richly diverse and scenic area of the southern Appalachians. We took a hike on the only trail, the Bluestone Turnpike Trail, a 9.5-mile moderate hiking trail that follows the path of an old riverbank road, farmed and timbered until the 1940’s. It connects Bluestone State Park and Pipestem Resort State Park. We accessed it from the Bluestone State Park at the north end, and hiked in 2 miles and back.

• Gauley River National Recreation Area (#327), where the 25 miles of free-flowing Gauley River and the six miles of the Meadow River pass through scenic gorges and valleys containing a wide variety of natural and cultural features. The several class V+ rapids making it one of the most adventurous white water boating rivers in the east. We mostly just looked at it (based on Ranger Recommendations), from the Summersville Dam (second highest earthen dam in eastern US) and some overlooks in Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park (which also gave us a surprise new Civil War site.)

Off for the Charleston area of West Virginia

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