Welcome back world to our little camping adventure to West Virginia!
Just to recap, we took a three day camping trip to West Virginia as our final summer "hurrah." We wanted to become one with nature and see gorgeous mountains and rivers that carve through West Virginia. For the first part of the trip, click here.
Part II of our grand three day adventure began with our arrival to our campsite, Grandview Sandbar. We set up camp and got everything situated. However, we soon realized that we had no firewood to make a fire. After about 40 minutes driving in the middle of nowhere, we spotted a Dollar General where we bought charcoal. With the grill started, Cassandra started slicing and dicing some food for our dinner that night. However, we had forgotten the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere and had no light around us except for our makeshift lantern (a flashlight pointing to a gallon of water). Super paranoid, we acted quickly by throwing the uneaten food in a trash bag and cleaning up quickly, threw the food in the car and in the tent we went for the night.
Day two started bright and early for us. We all slowly got up to a chilly morning and Cassandra (always being the first up) got another charcoal fire started. We quickly hopped on breakfast since we hadn't eaten the night before. We had french toast (yum!) and coffee. Cass had printed up a few locations for us to check out for the day, one of them being the historic town of Hinton.
The road to Hinton took us up and down the mountain where there were occasional overlooks to the river below. Hinton is a small town which consists of a few one-way roads and family owned businesses. The town looked like something out of The Notebook. We saw a sign to go see Sandstone Falls and we drove for probably another 20 minutes until we got to a parking lot and we saw a boardwalk. We got to the end of the boardwalk and we saw stairs leading to a sandy shore so we walked down towards the water and came across a gorgeous sight (pictured above). I mean roaring waters and rocks that were warm from the sun, it was gorgeous. We lingered here for a while, took a lot of pictures, laid down on the rocks, and tempted fate by going closer to the running water.
Afterward, we made our way to Bluestone Lake State Park with hardly any people and enjoyed the calm waters for a few minutes before making our way to the dam. The dam was huge! Cass said it reminded her of the large dam in Mockingjay Part I.
On our way back to camp, we needed to stop at a Walmart to get firewood and ice for the cooler. We were so surprised to see so much civilization; there was a Five Guys Burgers and Fries and we almost cooed. With wood from Lowe's and ice from Walmart in tow, we loaded the car up with some more gas and we headed back to our camp. Once we got everything situated, we explored the campground a little and found a trail that lead to the river. This was around sunset so the view was warm and quiet. After exploring a bit and taking some photographs, we headed back to our campsite where we made mountain pies for dinner (pizza sauce and cheese and pepperoni, oh my!). Nadya was a bonehead and burned her mountain pie to a crisp (camping novice over here!). After a filling meal, we sat around the fire and watched the day turn to night and just talked about the trip, past experiences and things like that. We made s'mores but we had forgotten the chocolate so we did a s'mores/brownie hybrid which proved to be just as good (if not better). Once it got dark, we retreated to our tent for another night of cards and laughter.
Day three began just as early. We made a breakfast casserole that Cass had found online and it was phenomenal, we ate almost the whole thing with fruit salad and more fire brewed coffee. We had this entire day empty besides driving back home. We whipped out some beads and safety pins and started crafting. We made these adorable bracelets of beads and safety pins and it was more stressful than anything we had done on this trip. Satisfied with our activities for the day, we made some sandwiches for the road and started to pack up the tent. Daddy Long Leg spiders everywhere. We were playing annihilator to these spiders, harmless as they may be. Eventually, we got the tent rolled up, all the food and supplies packed away and we were (reluctantly) ready to drive home.
Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, and the drive home was absolutely beautiful. Although we only had to turn around once (thanks, Nadya!), we made it home safely and unloaded.
Sandstone Falls Overlook
Brooks Overlook
Sandstone Falls
Bluestone Lake State Park
Bluestone Lake Dam
Grandview Sandbar Campground
Overall, our trip to West Virginia was really nice. It was a beautiful location and we have already talked about planning a longer trip next summer (with better supplies of course). Through the last post and this one, you can find links to all of the spots we visited.
Last night, we went to the Thrival Festival in Pittsburgh to see Panic! at the Disco. It's a two-day festival so stay tuned for a post near the beginning of next week on our eventful week.
As always, thanks for reading,
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