This weekend, some friends and I packed up and headed out on a 6.5 hr drive to West Virginia for the weekend to go whitewater rafting.

We made it to our hotel without incident. When we checked into the hotel, the key to my room didn’t work so I had to go back down to the desk to have it rekeyed. When I got back to my room, the key still didn’t work. After trying a bunch of times, the door finally opened. Only, it didn’t open because the key worked, it opened because someone opened it from the inside. They had given me the wrong room number and all of our attempts to make the key work, woke up the guy who was sleeping in there. I then had to go back downstairs to tell them. They finally gave me the correct room number, which was better anyway because it was an adjoining room to Liz and Daniel. Once we were unpacked and in the right rooms, 4 of us went out to find a bar in town for a nightcap. We went looking for a saloon that we had seen on the map, but it was closed. We finally found a bar that was open and looked promising. It was a tiny bar on the inside but it had a large outdoor portion with karaoke, ping pong, and a balcony. We had a great time but at 2:30am I rounded everyone up so that we could get a little sleep before having tot get up at 6:30 for our rafting trip.

6:30am came really fast! We got up, had breakfast, and headed out to begin our rafting adventures. Daniel had never been rafting before (I think he was a little nervous). Liz, Bobbie, and Carolina had each been rafting at least once (some were still a little nervous). I made all the girls matching shirts to wear on the raft.

Because of all the rain they had gotten from Fred, some of the class 4 rapids were class 5 for our trip! It was a great trip! The water levels were really high and there were some really big rapids. For the first time ever on any of my rafting trips, I fell out of the raft. It was in a class 5 rapid. I was able to make it back to the raft and they were able to pull me back in. It felt like it all happened in slow motion, but reviewing the footage on the GoPro I was wearing, it happened super fast. There was even a part of the river where they allowed us to get out of the raft and swim in some of the rapids. The scenery was absolutely beautiful! Unfortunately, the battery on my GoPro died halfway through so some of the scenery, like the New River Gorge Bridge, didn’t get captured. We all made it to the end and everyone said they would be willing to do it again.

Professional photos from the rafting company.

After our rafting, we went to the hotel to regroup and then headed out to see a few sites that were kinda close. The first stop was the New River Gorge National Park. We wanted to see the New River Gorge Bridge from a different angle (we rafted under it on our trip). We walked down 178 steps to the bridge viewpoint. The scenery was gorgeous! But what goes down, must turn around and go back up, which means we had to go up ALL the stairs that we came down.

After the National Park, we drove to Cathedral Falls. It was a waterfall I had found that didn’t require any hiking. It was viewable from the parking lot.

Our next stop was Hawks Nest State Park. We didn’t think that there was enough daylight left to do any of the trails but we did enjoy a short walk out the viewpoint.

After the park, we headed back towards the hotel. We made a quick stop for some adult beverages to take back with us for our pool party/night in. We made our way down to the pool only to discover that unlike the water in the river, the water in the pool was freezing cold! We ended up just sitting around talking, laughing, drinking, and eating our take out. Once dinner was done we went back to our rooms where we played a few games before calling it a night.

Sunday was our day to make the long trip back home. Before we headed home, we went back to Hawks Nest State Park to do part of a hike that we didn’t have time for on Saturday. We knew we wouldn’t have time to do the whole hike and still get home at a decent time, but we wanted to hike enough of it that we could see a waterfall or two. The trail started off with quite the downhill trek and the ground was very slippery. We all made it without injury and we were treated to two waterfalls and some large rock walls. Once again, the hills we went down, we had to make our way back up. After hiking about a mile and a half, we got situated in the car to begin our long journey home.

This is us after we made it home safely. I think everyone had a great time. I am already planning our next adventures. Here’s to many more!