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Mid-Atlantic Vacation Blog
We started our first full day in West Virginia with a horseback ride in the New River Gorge area. Of course, I brought all of my camera stuff, and of course, I didn't realize that we weren't going to get off of the horses until the ride was over, so taking pictures was tricky (and taking extra camera stuff was stupid). It was only about 3 minutes before my lens cap fell off (I eventually recovered it, but it will never be the same, even with extensive counseling). Still, Brooke, with our old digital camera (the one the can point backwards) managed to get a picture to prove that I actually was on a horse:
As for the ride itself, it was pretty cool. Everything was guided, but we did all have to stay responsible for controlling our own horses. We were told to keep them from eating along the ride due to the many unhealthy things that grow along the route. We were to do this by pulling up hard on the reins. Brooke's horse, Sally (a.k.a. "Eater") did not care how unhealthy things were and ate what she wanted. My horse, Molly (a.k.a. "Tailgater") didn't have as big of a problem as she would only eat things she could grab without stopping. She also was enormous (in all dimensions), so I am thinking that she has spent quite a bit of time perfecting her technique.
Anyway, we got to an overlook of the gorge and I had approximately 45 seconds to snap pictures before we headed back to the stables (and several hours of new body pains). The pictures came out well, but I'm not posting them now since we got much better ones later.
After lunch went to the New River Gorge visitor's center and walked down numerous stairs and got a pretty good look at the bridge we had just driven across:
While the view of the bridge was great, we had an unusual encounter on the way back up the stairs as we crossed paths with a large group of young people. One person noticed my Colts t-shirt and said something about us being from Indiana. When we asked where they were from, they said they were from Batesville, and yes, several of the kids were former students of Brooke's. Freaky.
So after our brief time on the overlook and a trip inside the building to pick up some maps, we walked one of the "moderate" trails to get some more overlooks of the gorge:
The views were incredible, but the most amazing thing here is that there are no fences or guardrails on the edges of some of these cliffs. We always had solid footing near the edges of the cliffs, but it is pretty scary to think about. I feel more scared thinking about it now than I did when we were there. If we had known that there were minimal markings and no rails, I might have hesitated about going.
However, I am glad we went. It was really cool watching the rafters and kayakers go down the river and seeing a train go by, all 800 feet down. And of course, I took an insane number of pictures of the view, then Brooke spotted some birds (the one in the picture above), so I took an insane number of pictures of the bird. Then I managed to find some other wildlife:
The activities of the day pretty much wiped us out, so we went back to Beckley and had dinner. Now, at home, we have the Texas Roadhouse, Lone Star, and Longhorn, so I am thinking that nation-wide, all to the possible Texas themes for a steak restaurant have been covered, right? WRONG! In case our restaurants have missed something, we went to eat at a chain called the Texas Steakhouse. I got (brace yourselves) a steak. It was an indulgence, but it was pretty good. As for the overall experience, it closest to Longhorn (nothing else is the Texas Roadhouse). After that, we tried the local Dairy Queen where after two attempts, they could not make Brooke's chocolate-dipped strawberry blizzard correctly. My Kit-Kat blizzard was OK, but it could have used some more Kit Kat, chocolate, mixing...well everything, really. The good part is that the prices were about 40 cents lower than at home. Overall, a D. (We are serious Dairy Queen snobs; we need help.)
Tomorrow, we are going on a whitewater rafting trip on the Upper New River (much less adventurous than the Lower New). Brooke will be in a raft and I will be in a single person raft that is called a "ducky". After that, we may venture another trail that will actually take us downhill to where we can get better views of the bridge. After that, it will probably be straight to the hotel hot tub to try and convince our bodies to forgive us for doing all of this to them.
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