Staunton River State Park has 11 distinct trails, though a few are only accessible via others. They range in length from a small cut-over and accessible trail at 0.2 miles to a 8.6 mile River Bank Trail.
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A Short History of Ancient Rome by Pascal Hughes is exactly what it purports to be. Hughes does an excellent job charting the history of Rome’s founding by Romulus in the eighth century BC to the date typically cited as the end of the Roman empire in 476 AD with the incursion of the Huns into the West of Europe.
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We are not part of the roughly half of Americans who believe in ghosts. (Various surveys report between 40-60% of Americans believe in ghosts.) So, when US Ghost Adventures contacted us to see if we’d like a complimentary ghost tour in one of several cities, my natural inclination was to decline. But then I thought, what the heck, why not?! Neither of us has ever gone on a ghost tour before, so we had no preconceived idea of what to expect.
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The full title of this new book is Tom Paine’s War: The Words that Rallied a Nation and the Founder for our Time. This full title explains Kelly’s two focus areas for the book: first, bringing to life the important and under-valued role Paine played in the American Revolutionary War; and second, addresses why this story is important in our modern era and why Paine isn’t more well known and studied as a true founder of the United States.
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This was truly an entirely hiking-filled vacation, and the highlights were the gorgeous views of the lake within the park and surrounding mountains, particularly from Molly’s Knob, offering a sweeping view.
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Big Nobody follows Constance, a half-Greek, half-British adolescence during her coming-of-age era in the late 1970s. We first meet Connie as she struggles to find a way to live with her father, who she blames for the death of her mother and brothers that has occurred in the recent past. She has nicknamed her father The Fat Murderer and has a vivid interior life where she converses with David Bowie and Marc Bolan, whose posters dot her bedroom walls.
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Smith Mountain Lake State Park is located in southwest-ish Virginia, about 40 minutes east of Roanoke, 2.5 hours southwest of Richmond, 3 hours north of Charlotte. The lake itself is a man-made reservoir of immense proportions. The shoreline measures 500 miles and the lake is 40 miles across. In fact, in 2023, Travel + Leisure magazine, called Smith Mountain Lake (SML to locals) the “Lake Tahoe of the East”. The shoreline is dotted with homes for both locals and vacationers and is a popular spot for people to rent houses.
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Fallingwater Cascades, located off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Bedford County, is located just a few miles north of the popular Peaks of Otter area. This trail is 1.0 miles in total length (down and back) and runs along the cascades with pretty views of the cascades themselves and small pools of mountain water. The trail is entirely a descent to the base of the cascades followed by an ascent back up with the total elevation change of about 365 feet. This area is particularly pretty in the spring and fall.
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Abbott Lake Trail is located about 50 minutes north of Roanoke, VA, in Bedford in the heart of the area known as Peaks of Otter, and is located right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. For more information on the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, which travels through Virginia and North Carolina.
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Before her epic Icelandic journey begins, Valerie Tobruk is first a toll collector, a job that is often hidden in plain sight. While Valerie enjoys her short interactions with her customers and even forms relationships with her regulars, most just pass right through her booth and pay her no time of day. In this way, Valerie is both deeply part of the world and tucked away from it, a dichotomy that seems a perfect fit for her personality.
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Sharp Top Mountain Trail is labelled - appropriately - as strenuous. The trail does flatten out a little bit at points along the way but it is a steep upward climb, gaining over 1300 feet in elevation in 1.5 miles. Large segments are basically carved rock stairs. One way to think about this in a different scale: this is basically like climbing 130 flights of stairs over a 1.5 mile distance.
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A couple of years ago we visited Watoga State Park for the first time. Coming of off no travel for 18 months due to the start of Covid, this was also our first foray into staying at a state park. We had a great trip and have since visited a multitude of state parks across the states of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. What we didn’t do much of during that first trip to Watoga is spend time exploring the hiking within the park itself. Instead, we mostly explored the broader Pocahontas County region, which has a lot on offer!
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On our fourth (and final) full day at Watoga State Park, we were confronted with spotty rain and the threat of thunderstorms. So, we ruled out a morning hike and an afternoon bike ride on the Greenbrier River Trail and instead came up with a new itinerary. We hung out in our cabin in the morning reading, headed north 30 minutes to the town of Marlinton for lunch, visited the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center, crammed in a 1.5 mile roundtrip hike to a beautiful series of waterfalls, before returning to Marlinton for dinner right on the Greenbrier River. Not a bad day at all for one that was entirely different than our original plans!
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On our third full day at Watoga State Park, we hiked Ann Bailey Trail (6 miles roundtrip) out to a fire tower and a loop trail that combined Busch Settlement Trail, North Boundary Trail, Buck & Doe Trail, and Bear Pen Trail (3 miles total). We ended the day by grabbing soft serve ice cream cones from nearby Jack Horner’s Corner.
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On our second full day at Watoga State Park, we hiked Monongaseneka Trail (5.5 miles after we added some neighboring trails to create a loop plus 2 miles on bike to return to our car), and biked 15 miles on the Greenbrier River Trail, which we accessed about 30 minutes away so that we could catch the segment of the trail through the 400-foot long Droop Mountain Tunnel.
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Watoga State Park is located in eastern West Virginia in Pocahontas County, the county directly north of the more well-known Greenbrier County (home to Greenbrier Resort). The park is the largest state park in West Virginia at over 10,000 acres.
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With lots of hikes, caves, and natural bridges/arches, this is a park with a lot more versatility than many others! The park also has a number of other activities that we didn’t explore - mini golf, a swimming pool, kayak/canoe rentals for the lake, and more.
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We spent four full days (and five nights) at Carter Caves State Resort Park. We enjoyed all seven of the park’s hiking trails (about 14.5 miles in total), which varied in length from small connector trails up to 8.5 miles. We also hiked 2 of the 5 multi-use trails, exploring 4.5 miles out of 16.5 miles of those.
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We spent four full days (and five nights) at Carter Caves State Resort Part and enjoyed five of the park’s caves during our visit. We took three guided tours, explored two caves entirely on our own as self-guided adventures, and didn’t do some of the more intense caving options.
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On our fourth day at Carter Caves State Park, we hiked the longest hiking trail at the park - Carter Caves Cross Country Trail (“4 Cs Trail"), though we amended our route a bit to avoid doubling back on a shared section of the trail with Three Bridges Trail. We created an equally long hike, clocking in at 8.5 miles. We also had an unexpected situation with one of our pups that ended well but was not exactly how we wanted to end our trip.
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