Appalachian Excursions

[magaw]

This is a series of Short road and camping trips , in and around the mountains of West Virginia, that me and my closest friends and family have enjoyed. Not all of the trips we take are off road but we think they are interesting, none the less.
Our group has a plethora of options when it comes to transportation. Here are some of the rides we use on our trips as well as daily drivers:

My Jeep ZJ



Stacy's 4runner



Lorne's Ural



Jeremy's Frontier



Disclaimer: These trips aren't in order I will do my best to tell when they took place. I wanna start with a recent trip to Fayetteville, WV that my wife and I took this weekend (While it's still fresh in my mind).

There is a little historical back ground to the motivation for our trip to Fayetteville. A year ago I was searching the interweb for some interesting destination ideas and came across a list of ancient stone faces in America, to my surprise there was one listed in West Virgina. The description was vague and it included a picture from a post card printed in the 1940s. After scouring the internet for many hours I could find only three pictures and barely anything about this stone head , called "the Old Man of the Canyon". Supposedly it was located at the intersection of route 19 and 21 in a place called Chimney Corner. After looking at my Gazetteer I realized that the description on the post card was so old that the Route numbers have since changed . Looking closely at the map for a few, I nailed down, the location where I thought the old post card was describing. With nothing better to do on a Saturday, my wife and I decided that we would go check it out, since it was only a little over an hour away from our home town.





The Fayettville area has tons of stuff to do and lots of great places to eat. With the location of the "Old Man of the Canyon" being right in the New River Gorge, we knew it would be a great trip even if it was just for the day.



We stopped to read a historical marker along the way. I don't know if the giant stone head is man made or a coincidence of nature, but either or, I would have to think it was revered by the ancient people of the area. That marker is a whole other trip but one for my Jeep and not our 4runner. So we found Chimney Corner. As you can see on the pic of the map it is at the intersection of route 60 and route 16. After turning onto 16 you will drive about 200-300 yards and right before you start to cross a small bridge look up to your left and low and behold there it is! This thing is enormous I'm guessing that the length of the face is around 25 feet tall





The funny part is that we have driven right by this thing like fifty times and missed it some how. I want to try to find out more about it, maybe see if there were any native Indian tales or even if it was a product of the road being made? The black and white picture shown above was taken from the Fayette County Historical Society so that seems like a good place to start. I wanted to try and get a pic of the 4runner in front of it but there was too much traffic and the old man sits in the middle of a blind turn.

 

[magaw]

After looking at "the Old Man of the Canyon" for a while, we decided to hit up our one of our favorite places to eat





Cuban pulled pork / Hot Ham and pepper pie



and some Magic Hat number 9

After that we called it a day and headed for home. Thanks for looking

Josh

 

[matthewp]

Nice! It's great to find wonderful little sights "off the beaten path" like that!

 

[xjaugie]

Interresting, I too have found W Va this year. I belong to a lease of 3,600 acres on the Southwest corner of Maryland and have been running around the mountains of Maryland forever, but never really thought about crossing the state line. Until Now that is. Two weeks ago we spent the weekend camping and explorign around Blackwater Falls and this past weekend we wondered around Seneca rocks.

I think I have found myself a new place to explore for a while, the mountains of W VA are full of history and photo ops. And even a few dirt roads to run on.

 

[magaw]

Nice! It's great to find wonderful little sights "off the beaten path" like that!

We love trying to find forgotten historic places and land marks that most people have never heard of. Some are archeological sites and others are natural. WV is full of them

 

[magaw]

Interresting, I too have found W Va this year. I belong to a lease of 3,600 acres on the Southwest corner of Maryland and have been running around the mountains of Maryland forever, but never really thought about crossing the state line. Until Now that is. Two weeks ago we spent the weekend camping and explorign around Blackwater Falls and this past weekend we wondered around Seneca rocks.

I think I have found myself a new place to explore for a while, the mountains of W VA are full of history and photo ops. And even a few dirt roads to run on.

I enjoyed your thread about black water falls. Plenty of dirt roads in this state. Its always fun to grab a Gazetteer and start following the smallest lines on the map.

 

[mtnbike28]

I loved the search for the face trip! What a great weekend idea!

 

[magaw]

Some more Fayetteville fun

Since I'm on the subject of Fayetteville I will post up some pics of another trip that Stacy and I did last Summer. It was another short day trip that included a stop at Pies and Pints (our favorite). I think it was around late June or early July...very hot regardless, so we loaded in my Jeep and Headed towards Hawks Nest State Park to catch a Jet boat ride.
We purchased our tickets and climbed aboard this guy for a ride to the bottom of the gorge where the boat awaited.



The docking area is below an old train trestle





The boat captain is a Wiley character and really made the trip. His wife is from England and was laughing with us about how most Americans love Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear UK.. I just remember her laughing and saying in a British accent, " Oh...Jeremy Clarkson,..why does every one here like him so much?" This I found hilarious. They were great people.



The boat ride takes you to the bottom of the New River Gorge Bridge (famous for Bridge Day)



After docking we headed back up the mountain on the Gondola and headed for the Jeep to see what else we could find in the area. We decided we would check out the Ghost Town of Thurmond. Now this isn't what you normally think of when you hear the words "Ghost town". Thurmond used to be a boom town in the mining days and supposedly had one of the busiest train stations in the east. There have been several failed attempts to revive this old town and all have failed. Its kind of like a tourist attraction gone wrong. I believe its in the hands of the WV state parks association now. I have yet to catch the visitor center open, but its still a neat stop....literally! Amtrak still has a scheduled stop there. Why I'm not for sure?









An interesting note about the gondola pictured above. It also serves at a mountain bike shuttle for local trail system. I thought that was pretty cool

 

[ruffshod67]

Thurmund is one of nicest towns in the state it would be a great place to film apost apocalyptic movie.
I think it would neat to ride the train in and hike over to Ace and camp a day or two and ride the train back.

 

[magaw]

The railroad bridge where Stacy is standing in the pic above is interesting its a Railroad trestle with a one lane motor vehicle bridge cantilevered off of the side of it. If you run into someone in the middle you would have a long way to back up. So after leaving Thurmond we took a different route out to see if we could discover anything else. As we climbed out way out of the gorge we made one last stop at the historic Glen Jean Bank



And before we left Fayetteville we stopped to have a look at "Dove's Outlet" a kind of flea market/primitive mini mall, where I narrowly escaped the clutches of the "Mad Hatter" who had to have a whole assortment of hand made bracelets.



Thanks for looking, Josh

 

[magaw]

Last winter

This is another short trip that we took last winter. With the weather being nasty outside and having a little cabin fever, it seemed like a good time to take a short road trip. Lorne mentioned going to see the Leo petroglyph in Jackson County Ohio, so Lorne, Jeremy and I all piled in Jeremy's Frontier and made the trip happen. We weren't sure what to expect, since none of us had ever been before but our expectations were exceeded by this little known road side park and we got just the dose of adventure that we needed to kick that nasty cabin fever.





The symbol with the smiley face is the one that all of the fuss is about. Supposedly it is a person with a head dress on. Pay attention to this one because it wont be the last you see of it. I'll tell more about that later on in another trip report on this thread







The petroglyphs are covered by a really nice shelter put up by the state of Ohio, so it is a great place to go when the weather sucks



What blew me away about this place was the hiking trail, that takes you through a surprisingly deep sandstone gorge. It was a pleasant surprise and with several inches of snow, a little bit of a challenge.

 

[magaw]

If only I had brought my whip! or the General Lee





Apparently the previous summer storms took their toll on the little foot bridge.







All in all this is a great place to spend a few hours of your life. The trail is challenging enough to not be boring but easy enough to be family friendly and the rock art is out of the weather and interesting

 

[magaw]

I loved the search for the face trip! What a great weekend idea!

Thanks, There is another one in Pennington Gap Virginia that I want to check out

 

[magaw]

Thurmund is one of nicest towns in the state it would be a great place to film apost apocalyptic movie.
I think it would neat to ride the train in and hike over to Ace and camp a day or two and ride the train back.

Yes, that would be a fun trip. Jeremy said he had a bunch of pics I could swipe, from the First Ural trip to Laurel Fork. I'll try to post them up soon

 

[truck mechanic]

I was in va and WVa last june july, I was down there after the storms went through. ( I was working with the power co.) I fell in love with the area. I want to spend a whole lot more time there in the next few years. You live in a great part of this country!