July 24 to July 27

After our relaxing four days at Cummins Ferry, despite the few thunderstorms and no Cingular signal whatsoever, on Monday, July 24, we headed north and east through Lexington, KY, onto I-64, over the forest-covered hills of eastern Kentucky, to Carter Caves State Resort Park. I kept wondering if we were going to have a problem getting into the State Park. The closer we got, the more nervous I got.

Exiting at 161 and turning north, I got more nervous. The road was narrow and somewhat winding. What had I gotten us into this time!!!! After driving about 5 miles, we turned into the park, passing picnic tables along a creek and the Welcome Center. Then the sign indicated a left turn to the campground....a very hard left turn!!!! And up a hill to boot!!!! At this point, there were only a few low branches.

Up on top of a plateau, we had to make another hard turn, this time to the right and into some pine branches. We almost didn’t make it, and those branches didn’t sound too good on the roof. Continuing on, with an occasional branch hitting the antennas, we made one more right turn, although not hard, and then left into the campground. Ron parked, and I went to check us in. I questioned about the site, which happened to back up to the “right turn” intersection. Though I was told that it should be no problem, we could change if necessary. Well, to make a longer story much shorter, we did make it into that site, but we did discover that the wind sensor for the big awning had been broken off by one of those low branches.

We found this park to be very family-oriented with lots of activity going on outside. Dads were playing a horseshoe-type game, kids were riding bikes, and one little towhead boy was getting into just about everything. I felt like I was in a timewarp!!!! Shades of when my girls were growing up, except we didn’t have a large RV.

The next day, we went off to explore our surroundings, stopping at the Welcome Center first. It’s really just a big gift shop with a big counter where they take reservations for the cave tours. We signed up for the X Cave Tour at noon. This cave tour was totally different that the others that we’ve been on. The passages were very narrow and sometimes very low....a little claustrophobic. The guide pointed out cave crickets and spiders, along with the standard stalagtites and stalagmites and other wet cave features. This cave, however, has two passageways that cross, hence the “X Cave” name. We continued on in the “wet” part and then came back through the dry part. Actually, the dry part wasn’t all that dry because of condensation.

One formation in X Cave....	and another formation!!!!

For our next stop on our circuitous route to North Carolina, on Wednesday, July 26, we headed east on I-64, up and down over the forested hills, and after about 30 miles, we crossed the Big Sandy River and into West Virginia. The terrain immediately seemed to change, from forested hills to forested mountains. Ron reminded me that West Virginia is known as “The Mountain State”.

As we approached Charleston, the capital of West Virginia, the traffic increased, and I could tell, from looking at the map, that we had to be aware of which lane to be in. The highway crossed the Kanawha River four times before continuing on the toll road!!!! We did, however, see the beautiful capitol building with its gold dome. Once we were on the West Virginia Turnpike, we paid a $2 toll twice, not that bad, considering what we pay on the Beltway in Houston. Thankfully, I-64 exited the Turnpike just south of Beckley.

Ron had noticed earlier that we would be crossing the New River. He also said something about the highest bridge of some sort. Well, we didn’t go over that highest bridge, but the highway did descend 5 miles at a 7% grade down to the New River. We saw a sign for a visitor center, but missed the turnoff. Finally, we reached our exit to go south toward Alderson. The highway was almost straight south, but it drove like a roller coaster. After about 11 miles, we turned east on SR63 for 4 miles and reached Greenbrier River Campground, our destination for the next two nights.

The next day, I looked up the New River Gorge area and found the NPS website. Since we missed that visitor center yesterday, I suggested that we take a scenic route to get there and maybe backtrack to another visitor center for more views. First, we backtracked the few miles to SR12 in Alderson and headed south through town. The highway pretty much skirted the Greenbrier River, up and down and sometimes a bit windy. Just outside the town of Talcott, we pulled into a turnout to read about John Henry, the black laborer celebrated in song. After crossing the river, we turned north on SR3 toward Hinton, now following the other side of the river. Just south of town, we crossed back over the river and carefully followed the highway signs through town, finally picking up SR20. This town seemed to be in a timewarp, as it hasn’t really changed much since it was built on the hillside many years ago. The streets are very narrow and one-way through it.

Once through there, the highway was down near the New River, but soon started climbing into the mountains. At about the highest point, we pulled off at the Sandstone Falls Overlook and took a short path down the hill to view the falls. I really couldn’t believe how high above the falls that we were!!! Continuing on, we passed the small hamlet of Sandstone and under the interstate to the visitor center.

High above Sandstone Falls	New River Gorge Visitor Center

Now this was a really wonderful visitor center, built in an environmentally safe way. The most amazing thing about the center was the map of the New River Gorge area embedded on the floor. We viewed the exhibits and found out that Hinton was a railroad town in the early days. Anyway, one of the rangers suggested going west on the interstate and then north to Grandview, the highest point in the park, for the best view of the river. So we did, and yes, the view was spectacular!!!

The map imbedded in the floor	The hazy view from Grandview Overlook