Hiking the Falls of Hills Creek

West Virginia Travelog #10
Hillsborough, WV - Sun, 17 Sep 2023. 4pm

To cap off our "The weather's crummy... let's go hiking anyway!" day today we visited the Falls of Hills Creek out in a remote part of West Virginia. It's quite a haul from our hotel in Beckley, but what else are we going to do on a rainy day?

It was actively raining as we started the hike. We considered not hiking, but again, what else are we going to do today? We pulled on our rain jackets and set off down the trail. At least the rain keeps out the riffraff. We had the trail almost entirely to ourselves for the 2 hours or so we were here.



Hills Creek features three waterfalls, upper, middle, and lower. The falls in my photo above are Middle Falls. The total drop at this tier is 45 feet. We passed upper falls but there was no good vantage point for photos. Here, with Middle Falls on Hills Creek, an elaborate set of stairs leads visitors safely down into the canyon.



These stairs are going to involve some huffing and puffing going back up.

But wait, there's more...



...More stairs to climb down to see Lower Falls. You pay on the return, but the views are worth it.



The lower falls are the tallest of the trio, at 63 feet. Here the water pours over a rocky lip, and there's a hollow underneath the ledge and behind the water. In drier weather we would have scrambled down from the wooden walkway to the path below and walked behind the falls. In today's soaking rain that's too dangerous.

Another Rainy Day, Another Day of Sleeping In

West Virginia Travelog #11
Beckley, WV - Mon, 18 Sep 2023. 9:30am

I took it in stride when I awoke to crummy weather yesterday. Rain on Sunday was in the forecast days ahead of time. I was willing to boot one day of hiking— even though it turns out we didn't boot the day yesterday but instead got in two hikes, at Cathedral Falls and Hills Creek Falls. Well, today it's still raining. And rain today wasn't in the forecast, even as of last night. And today I was looking forward to a full day!

Partly because the gloom outside I slept in this morning. But only partly. The other part was staying up too late yesterday evening and still needing to catch up on sleep from pulling something close to an all-nighter (courtesy of a red-eye flight) Friday into Saturday. After that red-eye plus 324 miles of driving, plus a few hikes Saturday... followed by 198 miles of driving yesterday and a few more hikes Sunday, I just couldn't push through my sleepiness to get out of bed with my 6:45am alarm seeing the crummy day that awaited me. It wasn't looking any better at 7:15. Or 7:30. Or 7:45. Or even 8am. Though at 8:15 I made myself get up anyway. If nothing else I wanted breakfast.

I ate a leisurely breakfast downstairs in the restaurant. There was no rush, I thought. My big plans for the day were already shot, I thought. But back up in the room Hawk asked if our plans were still "on". I started to count through the timing to explain how it wouldn't work at this point... except counting it out showed that it would work. We'd just get back to the hotel late in the evening, between 9-10pm. Hawk said she was fine with that and could even take a shift of driving in afternoon so I wouldn't be so worn out from driving all day. Now we've got our day-bags packed and, again like yesterday, it's time to make some tracks!

The Song Follows Everywhere We Go

West Virginia Travelog #12
Blackwater Falls State Park, WV - Mon, 18 Sep 2023. 1pm

🎵 Almost heaven, West Virginia 🎵

Those are the opening lyrics of John Denver's classic song "Take Me Home, Country Roads". I thought about the lyrics and song as we were traveling to West Virginia a few days ago. It turns out I haven't been able to get them out of my mind since then... because the state of West Virginia has basically made them its slogan.

At multiple parks we've visited, for exmaple, "Almost Heaven" is the tagline. Consider these signs we saw at Cathedral Falls yesterday:



Lest you think that was a one-off, the "Almost Heaven" slogan appears to be standard branding at West Virginia state parks. Here's the sign we saw at Falls of Hills Creek yesterday:



"Almost Heaven" is also branded on all kinds of tourist mementos we've seen for sale at gift shops. "Country Roads", too.

The sloganeering jumped the shark today when we saw this at Blackwater Falls State Park:



It's a selfie station with a swing that's branded with "Almost heaven" on a sign cut in the shape of West Virginia.

Don't get me wrong; "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is a classic song. West Virginia is getting carried away with it.