Another whitewater rafting trip a few summer ago involved floating down the New River Gorge off of Hwy. 19 in West Virginia which had Class III and IV rapids. That's about all the excitement Chuck and I can handle on whitewater. You can go in early spring when the rapids are much faster, but that's for the young who think they're going to live forever.
We had talked my sister and her husband into going with us. My sister wasn't too excited about this but she finally agreed to go. My sister is a smoker so she was probably wondering how she could smoke and hold on in that raft. You could tell she was really nervous. As soon as we got in the raft and got to the first set of rapids, for some reason, Chuck fell out of the raft. We'd been on plenty of whitewater trips before, so this was unusual to say the least. I have to admit it scared me too when he fell out but I tried to hide my fear as the crew helped him back onto the raft. My sister had the look of terror on her face watching Chuck in the water. She would have probably ate the whole pack of cigarettes at that moment if she could have, but we soon continued our trip thru the gorge. The boulders on this lake are just massive in size and beautiful. We finally made it to our take out just below the New River Gorge Bridge and got to our cars.....yeah, you guessed it, she lit that cigarette so fast. I don't think we'd ever get her to do that again.
The New River Gorge Bridge http://www.nps.gov/neri/index.htm mentioned above, is an engineering masterpiece that springs across an awe-inspiring gorge in the hills of West Virginia. When it was completed in 1977, it was the largest steel arch bridge that had ever been built with a clear span of 1,700 ft. crossing a valley that is 876 ft. deep. You can spend an entire afternoon at the visitor center, which has a great view of the bridge, ad well as the time it takes to find that award winning picture. There are cabins, motels and camping in this area with lots of restaurants nearby. We discovered a wonderful little pizza place nearby called the Pies & Pints http://www.piesandpints.net/ located in downtown Fayetteville, West Virginia just off Hwy. 19. We actually found out about this pizzeria through a magazine identifying the top 10 pizza restaurants in the east. Sometimes we all just need a little help and this was well worth saving the article.
Another neat thing that happens on the New River Bridge is "Bridge Day". On the third Saturday of October every year, the bridge is closed for risk and fun. If you're into extreme sports, which we're not but I love to see people that are, you will truly enjoy this event. Crowds of up to 200,000 people will travel here from all over to see base jumpers. These are adrenalin junkies that like to experience the thrill of freefalling from the bridge for up to 9 seconds before opening their parachutes. You'll also see rapelers competing to make the fastest climb while whitewater rafters, that's us, negotiate the rapids far below the New River Bridge.
Believe me, our whitewater experience was plenty of an adrenalin rush for these "baby boomers".
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