Boyfriend and I took a couple days off before Memorial Day weekend to take a camping vacation to Pocahontas County, West Virginia. The drive to Seneca State Forest from Richmond is 3.5 hours and very lovely. We arrived on a Thursday evening to just a few people in the campground.
I read about this campground in The Best in Tent Camping: West Virginia by Johnny Molloy. It is a nice little campground with a small stream running through it, perfect for tent camping and rather uninviting for RV's. Each campsite has a critter-proof trashcan (which is nice) and a totally sweet stone grill. The campsites are big, and when the campground was only half-full on Thursday night, it felt a lot like camping in wilderness. The campground filled completely on Friday and Saturday nights, and though we had some obnoxious neighbors with terrible camping etiquette, they were pretty distant from us. Those neighbors would NOT have been bearable in a cramped Virginia State Park campground.
The Seneca State Forest Campground has a pit toilet, and a short drive away there are full-service bathrooms with coin showers. That was nice, because I do not care for pit toilets. The Park also has "frontier" cabins which I would LOVE to stay in some time. The cabins are on the Greenbrier River and on a small lake and provide plenty of activities for families.
On Friday morning after breakfast, we went to the library in Webster Springs so that I could do some genealogy research. Then we went to Cass Scenic Railroad State Park for Ribs and Rails!
We had a nice train ride up to a mountain clearing, where there were picnic tables and a little picnic pavilion. For a reasonable price, we had all-you-can eat cookout fare, including pork ribs, boiled corn, potato salad, cornbread, coleslaw, baked beans... you get the idea. I don't eat pork, but there was plenty to eat even without the ribs! There was a bluegrass band, kids playing in the grass, and cold sweet tea. We had gorgeous weather and it was an awesome dinner out, West Virginia style. Seeing the company town of Cass was also interesting. The depot is on the beautiful Greenbrier River and there's an interesting little museum about the history of the town (see the picture above featuring the creepy stuffed baby bear). There's also a "company store" with knick-knacks, snacks, and train souvenirs.
The next day we went to the Cranberry Glades Botanical Area for a walk through the Cranberry Bog. This is a cool place and feels totally strange in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. A boardwalk runs through the bog to protect the plants.
We drove to the opposite side of the county to the Gaudineer Scenic Area where we followed signs for the "virgin spruce trees." There are about 90 acres of forest here than have never been timbered. The forest feels primeval. I never knew much about spruce trees, but they're fascinating. They have shallow root systems so they can grow on top of rocks. They also are prone to falling, and you can see the shallow root system of a fallen tree in the picture below. The forest here is mossy and wild. I loved it.
We also visited Beartown State Park, which features crazy and huge rock formations. People once believed that bears lived among the rocks, but I would think monsters lived here. This park is free, and there was a handful of families on the boardwalks walking among the formations.
Other highlights during the trip included a visit to the Green Bank Telescope, the largest moving telescope in the US. We visited the science center which wasn't very exciting, but we decided not to pay for a tour. I snapped a few pictures of the telescope, but pictures cannot really illustrate how big the telescope is. Pretty neat, right in the middle of the West Virginia mountains.
We also went searching for Pocahontas County's only covered bridge. I saw Locust Creek Covered bridge on the county tourism map, which didn't really give good directions to get there. So we had a little adventure and drove up and down some country roads to look for a road with Locust Creek in the name, and we finally found it.
We had a little rain on this trip, but it didn't get us down. Matt was sick with a cold, so our tourism was of the inactive sort--no climbing mountains or swimming because I was worried about his health and afraid he might cough up a lung. I wish I had planned a little better. I thought the Monongahela National Forest would be easier to explore without much planning. Next time I'll buy a map first.
So, I also have some news to tack onto the end of this post. Big news that deserves more than a tack, really. I've been offered a job near Charleston, WV. I'll be moving there, and I'm taking my boyfriend with me, too. I hope we'll be able to have mountain adventures all the time. I am really, really excited about this next chapter in life.
