By I’m not completely sure why I’m featuring this as a weekend trip idea because this would scare me completely shitless, but it piqued my interest. This weekend trip idea is built around the Fayetteville West Virginia Bridgewalk.
Fayetteville is a relatively small town of just around 2,700 people located in southern West Virginia. I just mapquested it and it’s a 6.5 hour ride from Lancaster so would be almost 9.5 hours from the northeastern corner of the state. It sounds like a long drive but it’s comparable to Boston and I’ve done that for the weekend several times.
Fayetteville is most famous for being the “gateway” to the New River Gorge and home of the New River Gorge Bridge which until 2003 was the longest steel arch bridge in the world and is 876 feet above the river. The bridge catwalk tour which is operated daily costs $69.00 and is two hours of walking underneath the bridge’s infrastructure, learning about its history and with amazing views the entire time. I got clued into this when I saw a Youtube video of a participant and while I don’t think I’d be able to do it (it looked very similar to the Croke Park tour I took in Ireland which almost saw me vomit several times) it looks like the kind of trip you’d want to brag to friends about over and over.
Every third Saturday in October is “Bridge Day” where the bridge is opened to pedestrians and holds a festival complete with music, vendors, rappelling, parachuting and base-jumping demonstrations. Unfortunately the bridge walk doesn’t happen the day of the festival so if you want to squeeze in both, plan for a three day weekend.
The New River, which is somewhat ironically considered to be one of the oldest rivers in the world is a popular place to go white water rafting. The area is also popular for hiking, rock climbing and a host of other outdoor sports. A fun place to stay might be the Ace Adventure Resort which provides lodging as well as options such as rafting, the bridgewalk, kayaking, paddleboarding, ATVing, obstacle courses, golf and rappelling.
If you want something really random try the New River Llama Trekking company. They don’t have a website I could find but their number is (304) 574-1117.
PA Weekend Fun 