The Newest National Park

My wife and I enjoy National Parks.  Particularly the remote and uncrowded ones like Big Bend in Texas, which we visited last month.  We are hikers and most of the parks have extensive hiking trail systems. We love experiencing the varied terrain and flora and fauna in quiet settings and if you stick with trails that are three miles or longer you generally don’t see many other hikers.  We found another great National Park this week in West Virginia.  This is West Virginia’s first national park and the nation’s newest one. 

New River Gorge National Park is a jewel most people have not yet experienced and perhaps have not even heard of.  The park is composed of the land on either side of the New River, paradoxically one of the oldest rivers in the country.  This is a large fast flowing clear water mountain river filled with rapids, waterfalls and whitewater thrills for rafters and kayakers.  The park itself includes the mountainous terrain on both sides of the river for 53 miles which includes what used to be a major coal mining area in the Appalachian Mountains. 

Like Big Bend, the park is not very close to major population centers, and that has kept the visitor count lower than most parks.  But it is well worth the drive.  There are many hiking trails, but we were only able to do a handful during our one day at the park.  We normally would have stayed longer and hiked more but being on the last part of a two-thousand-mile road trip to see our grown kids in Virginia, we were ready to get back home.  We went through the park because it was convenient to work it into our drive back to Arkansas and I’m very happy that we did.  We did get in about ten miles of hiking and several scenic drives including one OHV trail that my wife’s Bronco Sport Badlands Edition handled superbly in Rock Crawl mode.  Of course, it wasn’t that tough and a Prius probably could have made it, but it was fun anyway, pretending we were intrepid off roaders. 

If you like hiking I recommend the Endless Wall Trail that takes you to Diamond Point overlook.  It has a breathtaking view of the river hundreds of feet below the rocky point.  And if it’s the weekend you’ll see some rock climbers since they use that trail to access the cliffs.   The Long Point Trail is also a must see, it takes you to a rock overlook that gives you an awesome view of what used to be the longest single arch span bridge in the world, it is an impressive structure, but of course, being an engineer, I have a thing about bridges. There is also a manmade overlook on the north side of the bridge where you can walk down steps to get a much closer view.  Its 178 stairs steps, all on the way up going back. Yes, I did count them. Yes, I’m kind of OCD.  Guided rafting, zip lining and a harnessed-in catwalk tour across the river on a teeny walkway under the bridge are all optional activities we did not participate in, because one day was all we had.  There are mountain bike trails also in the park and in the area around it.

The park was not crowded but it does fill up on weekends and later in the summer since floating the river is very popular when the water gets warmer. We always try to schedule our park visits during weekdays and not on spring break or in the summer vacation season because we do not like crowds when we are exploring out in nature.  Hunting for overflow parking spots just detracts from the experience for us, but there was none of that, we found parking easily at the trailheads and there were few cars on the scenic drives.  The park is not really set up to handle crowds as easily as most of the older national parks either.  Some trailheads and overlooks only have parking for a few cars.  I’m sure that is a problem during peak season weekends.

The first few days of our trip took us to Colombia, Virginia which is south of Charlottesville.  We rented a VRBO there on a private lake and hung out with our grown son who’s a resident MD at UVA and with our daughter and son-in-law who are both in education in the Norfolk area of the state.  We cooked, hiked at state parks in the area and fished in the provided boats on the private lake.  We also got to watch our Hogs make it to the sweet 16, my wife, me and all three kids got their four-year degrees at the University of Arkansas, so that was pretty fun to see.   It was a nice relaxed weekend for our very busy kids and fun for us to hear about what is new in their lives. They brought a grand dog along as well who was quite entertaining.  None of them have figured out how to produce grandkids so the dog is as close as we’ve gotten to having someone to spoil.

We took two leisurely days to drive to Colombia but as usual we made the trip home in one 12-hour drive.  We are always ready to get back to our normal routines of tennis, running, pickleball and, this time of year, fishing.  I also have a meeting this afternoon on my volunteer economic development project which I hated to miss, since I’m heading up the team.  I need to get out on the tennis courts too, my tennis team is already playing matches and after just getting over a wrist injury my game is pretty rusty.   

If there is one best thing about life in retirement it is the ability to control your time.  You never have to schedule a ski trip during spring break, unless you’re taking school aged kids along.  You never have to visit national parks on three-day holiday weekends when they are crowded and you can’t find a place to park.  And you can decide to extend your trip another day or another week without having to ask anyone’s permission.  And that’s pretty sweet.

What about you, have you been to New River Gorge National Park?  Is it on your list?

How has being retired changed the way you travel, or how do you think it will when you do retire?

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