Day 76 - One last national park

 I woke up to another crisp, chilly morning with a LOT of dew.  Since I wasn’t in a hurry, didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, and didn’t want to pack up the camper wet (again!), I started with pancakes on the griddle one last time.  Then I went for a morning hike through the park.

The hike was amazing, I got in just under 7 miles on some of the STEEPEST paths I’ve ever been on.  There were so many sections that were steeper than a staircase!  But the most interesting part of the morning was that I didn’t see another human for the entirety of my hike!  I did encounter a box turtle who was eating something off the path, but otherwise it was just me and the birds.  What a relaxing way to start the day.


After getting back to camp, I set my destination for a campsite within the nation’s newest National Park - New River Gorge in West Virginia.  All the campsites there were first come first serve so I had my fingers crossed that there would still be a site for me.  


Because I was going to New River Gorge National Park, I got to do something I’ve always wanted to do - drive through West Virginia without taking the toll road.  I’ve always been curious about what it takes to get around it.  The answer is that it takes a little bit of extra time and a few extra miles, but otherwise it follows a similar path though you get to visit some of the small towns along the way.


After a lot of twisting and winding, I turned off the paved road towards Glade Creek Campground.  After about 5 miles of dusty gravel (with the outside shower head of the camper popping loose a few times due to the bumps), I arrived at camp and grabbed THE LAST SITE!!!!  I set up camp and started to explore the area.  As I walked down to the river I captured what might just be my best picture of the trip!  


I had arrived early and so I had time to do a longer hike.  I started up the Glade Creek trail and just kept going slowly uphill.  Eventually I realized that the sun was setting so I turned around and walk/jogged my way back to camp.  I was very sweaty when I returned.




I enjoyed some dinner and then I sat down on a rock that was in the river and listened to the sound of the water going past knowing that this was my last sunset in nature for a while.  While I would say I wasn’t ready to go home, it felt right that the trip was coming to an end.  But finishing with many peaceful deep breaths without anybody in sight sitting on a rock in the river just felt so right.  I genuinely hope there are more days like this in the future.




Eventually I pried myself off the rock and headed back to camp for the night.  It was already cooling off and I knew it would be a great night for my last night in the camper.


Total mileage - 13,337

# States/Provinces - 22 / 2


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 10 - Salt Lake City, UT to Dinsoaur National Monument, UT - Welcome Rover!

Image
Thanks to some feedback, I’ve realized that there was some slang that I wasn’t aware of with my previous blog title.  So, with the end of The Whale for us, we want to introduce Rover and it’s trailer, the now re-named Dover.  Rover is a 2019 Pathfinder Rock Creek edition.  We were lucky to find her and hope that she serves us well as we continue our adventure across the country. If you would like more on what happened with the Whale (2011 white Honda Odyssey), see the link below www.whaletailadventures.blogspot.com To welcome Rover to the family, we went out to get some fancy pizza to celebrate.  Unfortunately, the pizza place we wanted to get slices at only did slices for lunch.  So, we pulled an audible and got an extra fancy Hot N Ready from LIttle Caesar’s.  We also were right next to an A&W so we got a treat of both root beer and some lemon cake! After dinner we took Rover on its first mountain pass as we headed back East towards Dinosaur Nationa...
Read more

Day 33 - We're stumped

Image
  It was another crisp, cloudless evening for sleeping and I have to say that it just doesn’t get old.  Waking up in the middle of the night and having minimal lights but plenty of stars is a trend I’d be very comfortable repeating for a long time. Today was scheduled to be a reasonably short transfer day to an RV park just outside the gates of Yosemite.  Since there wasn’t any sightseeing to do at the RV park, we decided to make the most of the morning and went over to the stump garden to hike the loop there.  All four of us say that this was worth seeing because while it was sad that many of the sequoias were cut down in the past, it was great to be able to hike among the stumps and really appreciate how large the trees are.   As I mentioned before, trying to describe the size of these trees is impossible, but in the Stump Garden is the “Mark Twain stump” which was cut down and sections of it were sent to various museums to be put on display.  Nobody...
Read more

Day 24 - Las Vegas, NV to Chino Hills, CA - Yet another long transfer day

Image
Ahhh, cool desert air and no winds that kept us awake overnight - that’s the way to start the day. The day was destined to be another long day as we wree set to jump across the Mojave Desert jumping from the oasis that is Las Vegas to get over to Southern California.  While Amy took care of some packing up and laundry, the boys and I went over to the pool and they jumped in to start their day.  We pulled them out as part prunes around 10:00 and it was clear that the sun was going to turn Vegas into a hot place to be.  Time for us to go. Before we hit the highway, we had a few errands to run.  We stopped by Goodwill to donate hte toaster oven that had come along for the trip but never been used.  We also bought a second microwavable bowl which we needed way more than the toaster oven.  We also had the bench break on us so we stopped at Harbor Freight (sensing a trend?)  to get a drill and some screws to fix that.  Nothing major, but another repair ...
Read more