On to part 2 of my West Virginia adventure!
Sunday was a rainy day, so we decided to spend a lot of time driving around town visiting relatives and seeing some of the more ‘historical’ parts of the area. We drove up to the exhibition coal mine in Beckley, but just missed a tour that had started 20 minutes before we arrived. It was interesting to look at the buildings that were preserved around the mine compound. There was a school, several preserved houses, a church and an outhouse or two 🙂 It was a good representation of early 20th century coal camp life. Something my aunt and uncle told me that I found rather interesting was that single men and men who were married had completely different houses. Married men had houses that featured 2 or 3 bedrooms with 1 bathroom, while unmarried men basically lived in a glorified closet. Guess it paid off to be married back then!
For lunch, we stopped at one of my favorite places to eat in Fayetteville, Cathedral Cafe. The cafe is actually inside an old cathedral and has some of the original decor and stained glass still inside.
It’s cute and quaint and a lot of the produce and meat is local and sustainable. I wasn’t too hungry when we got there so I opted to order a side salad and some of their homemade hummus with pita. Both were delicious!
We took it easy Sunday evening because we had to be up bright and early Monday for our rafting trip!
Our trip kicked off around 10:00 a.m.and we were greeted by the river with a gorgeous view.
The New River Gorge is a popular trip in West Virginia that is divided up into two sections – the Upper New and the Lower New. The Upper New is good for families and people who may be a little too timid to go down big rapids, while the Lower New River is the real white water rafting with class IV-V rapids.
We opted for the Lower New, of course 🙂
Brian and I were in an 8 person raft, not including our awesome guide Andy McFly, and everyone who was with us seemed to be around our age, relatively young and athletic. This is always a good sign because if you have good people in your raft, your guide is more likely to take you down the ‘fun’ routes on the rapids.
The trip was awesome. We got wet… we got wild… and had an amazing time.
About halfway down the Lower we pit stopped for lunch on a beach off the river and ate some deli sandwiches, fruit, chips and such. You don’t realize how much of your body you are using when going down the rapids, so once we stopped I realized just HOW HUNGRY I was.
There were sections on the river where our guides let us do really fun stuff. We got to purposely jump out of the raft along and swim in the currents. There were a couple class II rapids that they let us go down with our own bodies (instead of in the rafts). That was a blast, although I did get a fare share of water up my nose! We stopped on the sides to jump off large rocks into the water and even got to go “surfing”, which is basically turning your raft around into the current and finding that sweet spot pocket of air that allows the raft to feel like it’s surfing. Pretty difficult to explain if you’ve never experienced it so here is a video I found that could best show what I’m talking about!
So. Much. Fun!
The trip took up all day and when we got back to the buses around 5:00 p.m., they had cold beer waiting for us. Bud Light never tasted so good!
Overall, Brian and I had an absolutely amazing weekend visiting with family and going on all kinds of adventures. I would highly recommend visiting southern West Virginia to experience some of these activities yourself!
Bites & Balance 