Day 7

I slept in a little bit this morning as I was up until midnight updating the blog and refreshing my memory about the days ahead.  After organizing the laundry and showering I jumped back on the computer to write notes about the day before while the girls checked their email.  This is a new thing for them on their kindles as usually they are trying to hog my computer instead.

We are at the point where the kids know seeing Grammie is getting close, so at least one of them asks me once a day if not each of them. This morning one of my tasks is to put a countdown for Grammie as well as Dave in the car. The excitement gets even bigger then!

We were camping in the middle of a gap between mountains so I knew it would be awhile before the sun began to bake us, so we cooked breakfast and relaxed a little as we talked about the days ahead.
This guy even joined us for a little while1



We packed up pretty quickly with everyone pitching in. At one point I looked over and someone had even started my sleeping bag.  Well, kinda.

We decided to go by the Mash Creek Falls before we left for a quick look. Brayden claimed he saw a water snake so that ended anything related to within a 10ft radius of the water.

   

I took the opportunity to teach Ryan a little bit about shutter speed since we were at a little waterfall with noone climbing all around. We had some challenges since it was so dark, but I think she did pretty good!

Then we headed up here!  This was a short trail back to the playground so we didn't stay on it long, but it was fun to climb up to the top!

We got on the road headed toward a lower part of the New River (this one flows north) that we'd stayed at the night before. With my fascination with bridges I knew we needed to stop at this place once I saw it was mostly on our way.  After a quick stop for photos for the kids journals in the really cool, small town of Fayetteville, we ended up at New River Gorge learning all about the history of the area.  Like most parks, this area was a booming industrial town but this time mining for coal. Once the resource was depleted, most of the people left and all the companies shut down. They did some logging in the area, but nothing like we'd seen in other parks.

The bridge I was interested in was built to speed what was an hour journey across the gorge to less than a minute. We found out it is the longest single arch span in the world. And it is massive.

            

After taking in the view from up top, we headed toward the steps down to the lower observation area. This year it's been quite a new thing with the kids to spot people playing Pokemon Go. We see people everywhere glued to their phones!

                                                 

This was about as close as we could get to the gorge and the bridge. I'm thinking now it might have been neat to find a way down under the bridge for a picture, but the kids would have probably vetoed that idea. So in Gammie tradition, we started counting our steps back up. This was definitely not a record-setting climb up at only 197 steps back to the top!

The drive ahead of us was about 2 1/2 hours so I tucked the kids back in with movies and snacks, cued up my ipod, and headed for our next destination. There is no easy way to get around all these mountains we're in within the Monongahela National Forest. I'm actually having a problem sometimes staying as fast as the speed limit because of some of the sharp turns and switchbacks. I don't know how all these truckers do it!

We snaked through a bunch of tiny towns and ended up at Seneca Rocks in what had to be the hottest part of the day on the hottest day of the year. Luckily just behind the mountain behind us I could see some dark clouds coming so we set up our tents real quick, ate a quick bowl of cereal, and headed to the visitors center just as the rain was starting. The center was closed already so we headed back to the campsite as the sun was already peeking through the clouds. In the 3 minute drive back the rain stopped and the temperature had dropped 20 degrees.

The kids worked on their trip journals for a little while then we ducked in the tent to read a chapter of our book while another short sprinkling blew by. Once we heard the birds again, Laney and Brayden challenged me and Ryan to a rousing game of campball. With wet grass and only shoes for bases, all the kids were sliding all around going for the ball or reaching for safety. There were tons of laughs and before too long we even had neighbor fans watching. In a stiff upset, we did end up beating them 11-10 in the 5th inning.  This little guy was watching us too.

After finishing the book, we all went to sleep replaying the game in our heads. At one point I think I even heard Brayden and Laney adjusting their strategy in the other tent. I guess we'll see how they do tomorrow!