Pictures from the New River Gorge National River

On June 5, 2007 Erynn and I moved from Dubuque, Iowa to Raleigh, North Carolina for my job with John Deere. I got an internal transfer from the Dubuque Works factory to a job in Business Development in our Cary, NC office. We own three cars and a dog. The company would only pay to ship two cars and the dog probably wouldn't do that well on the plane (at least we're confident enough to not try) so we drove from Iowa to North Carolina. Ideally we would have liked to take the Lotus, but there isn't much room for gear nor dog. We left about midday on the 5th and stayed the night somewhere in Kentucky. The next day we stopped at the New River Gorge National River in West Virginia. I had done some white water rafting on the New River while in college but had never been to see the sites. After visiting the park, we were only a few hours from our new home and our new house. Enjoy the photos.

Canyon Rim Visitor Center

Our first stop was to the Canyon Rim Visitor Center near Fayetteville, WV. Click here for a Map (590k pdf) of the park.

Here's Erynn and Buckley on the deck in the back of the visitor center. The deck affords a nice view of the valley.

The New River Gorge Bridge is one of the longest steel arch bridges in the world. The Canyon Rim Visitor Center has a nice deck structure that leads down the ridge a bit for some nice views of the bridge. It's about 80 steps or so down to the bottom of the deck, but the view is worth it.

We asked a girl to take our photo while at the bottom of the observation deck. Apparently taking our photo in front of the bridge didn't involve actually getting the bridge in the photo. The park rangers should probably trim that branch off, but some tree hugger would probably protest. Oh well.

Sandstone Visitor Center

We drove to the south end of the park and the Sandstone Visitor Center. The VC was brand new and very nice though the center itself didn't afford any spectacular views. Above are a couple photos of the exterior and interior of the VC.

Grandview

The last stop on our tour of the park was to Grandview. From the National Park Service web site:

"Grandview became part of New River Gorge National River in 1990, after more than 50 years as one of West Virginia's most popular day use state parks. The park is well known for its spectacular views of the New River and beautiful rhododendron."

I agree.

Here are a couple photos of us on the overlook where I took the panoramic photo above. The overlook is only a couple hundred yards from the parking lot.

This photo made Buckley's mother very nervous. For that matter it probably made my own mother very nervous, and she wasn't even there.

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