July Travel Log -- New River Gorge, West Virginia

I've posted southeast vacation photos from Savannah and Asheville stops. From Asheville we drove to the New River Gorge area in West Virginia. The New River Gorge is very deep, and very long. It has a huge bridge that crosses it.

We stayed in a cabin, rather rustic, and we met friends from Ohio who stayed in their RV.

This was the view to the side of our cabin. We hiked the trails for miles through the woods. We couldn't stop the kids from climbing down to the water. The signs read "No Swimming," but they swore they hadn't despite coming back soaked. Slipping off rocks and stepping through the creek doesn't count as swimming. It took a week for my daughter's shoes to get dry, a week until we were at a more civilized hotel that had a washer/dryer.


The creek below the cabin had an old mill. The creek was filled with boulders that the kids loved to climb. The water level was low this time of year, but we saw photos where the water went all the way up to the bridge.


Our big event at the gorge was an all-day white water rafting on the upper New River. We used Class VI River Runners, and didn't regret it one bit. Our party was made up of six adults and four kids. We used "duckies," which are inflatable kayaks. Three of the kids were in double duckies with a parent. We had one guide in a single duckie and another in a big raft that he sat high in and rowed. The big raft is what you traditionally see when 8 people go rafting with a guide. We started around 10:00 and didn't get off the water until 6:00. We went about six miles, going through rapids up to Class III, and stopping a few times to swim. The most unexpected fun was the lunch. We stopped at a rocky beach where we could hike to a waterfall. When we got back, the two guides had put out the best lunch spread I've ever seen. Now, we had played hard and anything probably would have been good. But this truly was good, family picnic food: cold cuts, tuna salad, pasta salad, fruit, and banana pudding. Banana pudding out in the middle of a river! That was heaven.

I took my daughter in the double ducky. Here I am desperately trying to keep her in the raft, and safe. And here she is, having the time of her life, with not a care in the world. She truly is fearless. Click on the photo to see a larger view.


I'll be posting one more leg of our trip -- the Rabun County, Georgia area. Stay tuned!