After our Greenbrier bunker tour wrapped up, we had a whole national park waiting on us and not a lot of daylight to waste. From our base in Lewisburg we decided to drive up to the north end first and work our way back south.
Canyon Rim and the Bridge
We started at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, got our National Parks passports stamped, and walked straight through to
the view out the back. That stamp meant a little more than most. New River Gorge is our 51st national park out of the 63, which leaves an even dozen still to go. We are in no hurry, but there is something satisfying about watching that list get shorter, one trip at a time. New River Gorge is the newer of the park's two main visitor centers, and it sits right by the main event, the New River Gorge Bridge.
From the visitor center it is a short walk down a paved and boardwalk trail to an overlook of the bridge, and the views are about as good as it gets. Of course, a main overlook is never quite enough for me, so I went and descended what felt like a thousand steps to a lower platform for an even better angle. My legs had some opinions about that, given the falls hike I had put them through the day before, but the bridge was worth every step.
And what a bridge. It stands 876 feet above the river, which makes it taller than the Washington Monument and one of the highest bridges in the country. When it opened in 1977 it was the longest single steel arch span in the world, built by
the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel out of a special steel designed to rust to a tough, weathered finish so it never needs painting. Once a year, on the third Saturday in October, the park throws Bridge Day. They shut the whole span down to traffic and turn it over to BASE jumpers leaping off the deck and rappellers dropping down ropes, with a huge crowd lining the bridge to watch.
Down into the Gorge
From the overlook we dropped onto the Fayette Station loop, a one-way road of tight switchbacks and steep grades that carries you all the way down into the gorge itself. You wind down through the trees until you are at river level, looking up at that same bridge from underneath, which is a completely different and humbling view.
Down there we found a little waterfall that was maybe 200 yards from the truck. The water cascades down a cliff, ducks
under the trail, and pops back out the other side to keep on falling to the creek below. It was a neat trick of engineering and nature working together, and Juneaux absolutely loved it.
Snacks, rain, and a lucky break at Concho
Next we aimed for the Concho Overlook, one of the iconic horseshoe bends of the river. It started pouring on the drive up, and right about then the narrator on our audio tour cheerfully said something like, here's hoping it's a nice sunny day, because the clouds can really block this view. The timing was almost too perfect. We pulled in, looked at the rain coming down, and just sat in the truck eating our snacks and waiting it out.
When the rain finally let up I figured I would walk down and at least see what we could see. Much to my surprise, the view was spectacular. There was one small cloud hanging over the gorge that somehow made the whole scene better instead of worse. I hustled back to the truck and told Donna she needed to go see it right now before the weather changed again.
Beating the clock to Sandstone
By then we were burning daylight and wanted to reach the Sandstone Visitor Center before it closed at 5. So we made the call to delay our next couple of planned stops and drive straight there. We caught another park film, walked the exhibits, and then turned around to start picking up the stops we had bypassed.
First up on the backtrack was Sandstone Falls. As the crow flies they were not far at all, but there is no crow road, so we drove 8 or 9 miles up one side of the river and back down the other to reach them. A short boardwalk trail carries you right out over the water. What makes these falls special is that there are so many of them, spread the whole width of the river, spilling over long sandstone ledges and braiding around little tree-covered islands. The whole thing felt like an oasis dropped into the forest, the river fanning out and pouring over rock in every direction. We walked all the way out to the bigger drop at the end. Just beautiful.
Then it was back up that same curvy 8 or 9 miles, across the river again over in Hinton, and up the other side to keep moving.
One last look from Grandview
Our final stop was the Grandview Overlook, and it earned its name. It is another great horseshoe bend of the New River, seen this time from around 1,400 feet up. The river curls far below you and the ridges roll off into the distance, and after a whole day of chasing views from every angle we could find, this one felt like the proper exclamation point.
Home to Lewisburg, and a Cup
It had been a long day, the good kind of long, so we headed back toward Lewisburg for dinner. And there was a very good reason to get back to a television. We settled in just in time to watch the Carolina Hurricanes finish off the Vegas Golden Knights on the road to lift the Stanley Cup.
A long day, a great park, and a championship to cap it off. A good day. A good day indeed.
Gallery
