Goodbye, 2021!

Like the year before, we decided to take the dogs and hole up in a cabin in the woods to mark the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. This time we opted for Bluestone State Park, in Hinton, West Virginia. It's about four hours away, more like five when you factor in potty/walk breaks for the dogs (and us).

We left on the afternoon of December 28. The dogs traveled well and were quite ready for dinner when we arrived.

This was our home for five nights. Very cozy! They supplied all the wood you could want for the fireplace. And there were several trailheads within a short walk of our front door.

Big Branch Trail at Brooks Falls, a bit north of Hinton, was a really great 2-mile loop hike. We passed countless beautiful little waterfalls, and zero people. Highly recommend if you're ever in the area!

A little farther up the road was Sandstone Falls. Like the Brooks Falls area, Sandstone Falls is part of the New River Gorge National Park. Sandstone Falls has an ADA-accessible boardwalk, which was full of people, as well as a rocky, but flat, short loop trail that no one but us seemed to care about. The dogs were FRANTIC along this trail. I think they smelled lots of tasty wildlife. We saw what appeared to be a large beaver lodge.

Along the Bluestone River (upper right in the image below), there's a trail that runs over 9 miles, connecting Bluestone and Pipestem State Parks. We only walked a short way on the trail on the Bluestone end, just to check it out, then drove to Pipestem. We would have hiked there but did not because it was raining so much. On the way back to our cabin we stopped off at Pipestem Falls. It's just a little wayside stop, with no trails, but a great place to take a few pictures.

A friend said we should look out for beers from Weathered Ground Brewery while in West Virginia. He meant we should look for their cans in specialty shops, but we found that the brewery itself was only about a half hour drive from our cabin, so we paid them a visit on New Year's Eve. I was all about the stouts and porters; Dacey had mostly IPAs but also tried the coffee stout -- breakfast beer! There was some good art on the walls, too. 

For dinner that night, we steamed up some delicious crab legs. We passed the time after dinner playing cribbage,  and rang in the new year with little single-serving Cook's champagne bottles we got at the grocery store, mixed with a cranberry shrub I had made.

On the first day of 2022, we did not get in the van even once, and just stayed in the park all day. We walked park roads down to the Bluestone River. Instead of the snow I had hoped for, we had had SO MUCH RAIN, and all the streams were running high and brown. From the Bluestone River, we took the Rhododendron Trail which we knew would take us back close to our cabin. But we got to a point where the trail was impassable unless we wanted to go shin-deep through the stream. So instead we clambered up the steep hillside on all fours, back to the road.

In the late afternoon, after maybe the third or fourth walk of the day, we came back to a cabin with no power. As the dark settled in, our only light was from the fireplace, a candle, flashlights, and an oil lamp. It was so cozy that we almost kinda wished the power wouldn't come back on. We were prepared to have a romantic candle-lit dinner of cold bologna sandwiches and beer. But the power did come back on around 6:45, and that meant we were able to cook the lasagna as originally planned. It was a great start to the year.

Before heading home on January 2, we made a point of stopping by the New River Gorge Bridge. It was definitely worth going a little out of our way. The bridge is an engineering marvel, and the views stunning.

We started with the upper overlook, and walked down and then back up the 178 (I think?) steps to the lower overlook. After that we did the driving tour, and a short trail walk at one of the pull-off stops. It was raining most of the time, but the area was beautiful and we'd like to get back again sometime with better weather and spend more time hiking the trails. 

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