Almost heaven, West Virginia...

Mon. Oct. 25: The temperature didn’t drop much more during the night. But we awoke to a gentle on-&-off again rain. After lingering over oatmeal and coffee we decided to hike the Mann’s Creek Gorge Trail, which began right at the campground. Foolishly, we didn’t bring our map or even water as we set off on a trail that we hadn’t really looked at for length or anything else. We hiked down to the creek and followed it for a while past some gentle falls area. The very light rain stopped for good and we began to climb. Up and up we went, stopping frequently to enjoy the spectacular views and colors of the gorge. The sun popped in and out and there was a gentle breeze. We reached what seemed to be a crest on the climb but had no way of knowing if we were continuing without stop, if we would circle back, or if we would come to a paved road or something. Since we had been hiking for about an hour and a half and the trail seemed to be descending, we decided to retrace our steps and return to the campground. In all we hiked for about two and a half hours. When we got back we looked at the map and saw that we would have come to a paved road and had a long walk back on it so what we did worked just as well for us. We probably had hiked about 4 miles. After a well earned, late lunch and a bit of a rest we got on our bikes and set off again, this time taking the map! We knew where we were going this time but couldn’t tell the topography from the map. After flying down a steep hill on a paved service road we had a long, slow climb up a hill that none of us managed to pedal entirely. Marv made it the farthest but we all had to walk some of it, pushing our bikes. We proceeded to go up and down several similar hills past the cabin area and through some lovely wooded areas. We saw only two cars most of the way. Along one side of a ridge we were treated to an amazing lookout with a view of the forested gorge and mountains in the distance. This is truly what we had come on the trip to see! We went down one more long hill and took a short hike to a small natural rock arch. Continuing on we had a short sudden hill we had to walk up and came out at the entrance to the main gate of the State Park which leads to a grist mill, swimming pool and other attractions. We knew that what goes down must go up and we were dreading climbing back up where we had come. We spent a long time discussing our options, including having Marv, the strongest biker, ride back to the campground and bring the truck to pick us up. Finally we decided to try the main highway back and just see how far we could make it and how busy it was. We climbed one long moderate hill right at the beginning, rounded a curve and were amazed that it was then nearly two miles of coasting downhill to the turn out for the campground. How could that be?!?! As Jan said, “You just wanted to yell Yahoo all the way down!” We walked the bikes up one last very steep but short hill and we had made it back. We had ridden 5¼ challenging but paved miles and had earned a cold beer to celebrate. After showers combined our veggies for a pork stir fry and rice. We enjoyed another campfire and s’mores and then our beds couldn’t have been more welcome.