New River Gorge - It's bigger than we thought!

When we decided to visit New River Gorge National Park, we didn't understand how big this park was. To do a loop that includes all four sections that we wanted to visit, we would have to drive 132 miles. Some of those miles are slow, so that loop drive would take about 3.5 hours. While the New River stretches 43 miles through the national park, the roads are obviously much longer. We have divided our national park sight-seeing into several days, but we are planning to wrap it up today. We took a picture of the map painted on the floor of the park's visitor center. We've already been to the Canyon Rim Visitor Center (at the top of this map) and now we're headed down to the red asterisk at the bottom of the map. 

We were up early this morning to start that driving from our campground. It's so early that the fog is still settled in the valleys between the mountains.

When we got to the first view point, we got a look of this section of the New River winding its way through the tree-covered Appalachian mountains.

We made our way down the mountain, and drove across the only bridge that crosses the New River for miles. We finally arrived at Sandstone Falls.

Instead of that far-away view, we hiked further to see a close-up of the river coming over the falls.

Sandstone falls continues for the entire width of the river--about 1500 feet. You can see Denisa on the right hand side of the picture below.

Only visitors dedicated to seeing all of the national park will make this drive, as we are pretty isolated from most thorough-fares. We made a 22-mile detour off the highway to see these falls. Because it is more remote, this is a good place for wildlife. We saw this large group of Canadian Geese.

But that "large group" in the picture above was actually just a little part of this huge group of geese that filled the entire width of the river. We tried counting, but we finally estimated there were over one thousand geese enjoying this section of the river today.

In our walk through the woods close to the river, we also spotted this interesting honeycomb coral mold. This area always seems to be moist, and we have seen different forms of mold in our hikes in West Virginia! In last summer's travels in the west, we constantly saw Smoky the Bear signs warning us that fire danger was high. So it's nice to see Smoky the Bear welcoming us with "fire danger low" signs this summer.

As we drove back along the river, we made a stop at Brooks Falls. We were greeted by the resident turtle.

Just to illustrate that this was a large turtle, Mark walked close enough to be in the photo frame as well.

He didn't seem so happy to see us, but he didn't move a muscle while we watched him.

After that ugly old turtle sighting, we are glad to say that we found prettier things growing near the river. 

Denisa has to include a couple pictures of the bright wildflowers in West Virginia.

Our next stop is at the Grandview section of the national park. We decided that we would make a loop trail out of the easier Grandview Rim Trail and the harder Castle Rock Trail. When we asked the ranger at the visitor center to confirm that this loop was a good idea, he took one look at Denisa's white hair and shook his head. He mentioned that Castle Rock was really rocky and rated as a "strenuous" trail. 

We would have to agree with him, but that just made us want to make that hike even more.

The Castle Rock Trail was only 0.6 miles long, and it gave great views of the fortress-like rock walls beside us.

Eventually we came out on top of the ridge for the best view of the New River far below us. This is the deepest part of the gorge, so that means the river is about 1,400 feet below us now.

This is also the best place to get the classic picture of the bend in the river. While we couldn't get that shot by holding the camera above our head, Mark finally got it by standing on top of the post on the guard rail. No pictures of that, because Denisa couldn't look at him in this precarious position.

The kayakers looked tiny even with our camera on its maximum zoom. We watched as the leader in the white kayak went first, leading the red kayakers through the white water.

It is warm and humid today, and even though we are hiking in the shade most of the time, we are hot.

So when we found a crack in the rock wall that was pouring out cool air, it was hard to leave that spot. Denisa didn't mind posing in front of that natural air-conditioner. You can almost hear Denisa saying things like, "Take your time, Mark . . . focus that picture . . . how about another picture?" so she can stand there longer enjoying that cool air.

We've put a lot of miles on the pickup during our time in West Virginia. But after two and a half days and a couple hundred miles of driving from our campground, we've managed to see most of the highlights of New River Gorge National Park. It was certainly bigger than we thought! We're singing "Take me home country roads" for the last time as we head back to the motor home here in almost-heaven West Virginia.