On the weekend of November 18th we did a quick vacation get-away to West Virginia to attend a wedding of one of Tina's cousin (congratulations Stacy). We took a side-trip down to southern West Virginia on Sunday down to see the New River Gorge Bridge. When built in 1977 it was the worlds largest biggest arch bridge.
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| A Beautiful Lady and a Beautiful Bridge |
It's about 800 feet from the river to the bottom of the bridge. That's almost as high as the Eiffel Tower is in Paris.
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| Long Ways Down to the River |
Interestingly this river flows NORTH all the way from North Carolin, into Virginia, and through West Virginia before meeting up with the Ohio River. I had always heard that the St. Johns river down here in Florida was the only river in North America to flow north, but visiting the New River introduced me to another.
We were visiting West Virginia shortly after Super Storm Sandy blew through NY and NJ and dumped an early snow storm onto WV. There was a lot of evidence of wind and early snow damage to tree's, as witnessed by this twisted/fallen tree trunk.
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| Twisted/Fallen Tree |
The river gorge was developed in the late 1800's through the mid-1950's with a railroad track and numerous coal mines along it's length. Pictures from that period were rather sad including numerous floods and a ton of land pollution, but they've done a good job of cleaning it up and turning it over to the national park system. Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore the numerous hiking paths around the area, but it gives us something else to do in the future.
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| Looking Up At the Bottom Of The Bridge |
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