Original Post Here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/features_entertainment/dave-lavender-late-winter-trip-comes-with-its-own-west/article_c86625ae-6822-5c39-855d-89cc0a0f50d3.html

While West Virginia may be small in area, we know how to stack, pack and pile things vertically.

Like the cluttered Fred Flintstone closet and Chevy Chase’s Vacation piled-high station wagon, there are plenty of things to find in the West Virginia mountains – it just takes a minute and a little work to dig through and get to them.

With a week off for Cabell County Spring Break, the Dave Trippin’ crew loaded the minivan to the ceiling with ski gear, more Magic Makers discount costumes than should be legal, hiking boots, musical instruments, playing cards, magic tricks and, oh yes, the family hound, and headed over to do a little poking around Tucker and then Pocahontas counties high in the West Virginia mountains.

We started our trip over in Canaan Valley at what has become a grand family spring tradition and what is one of West Virginia’s most joyous spring break and end-of-ski-season festivals, the Snowy Luau at the family-owned Timberline Four Seasons Resort (www.timberlineresort.com). For the past 21 years the luau has been bringing an irresistible mash-up of Hawaiian music, dance and pig roast with the wild and wonderful Snowy Luau slopeside traditions of snow sculpting, costume contests and fun and wacky on-the-slopes competitions.

While Timberline Four Seasons Realty (http://www.t4sr.com) has plenty of pet friendly options for cabins, we needed to find a place for the rest of Spring Break week, and, after some research, scored a great deal at Watoga State Park south of Huntersville and Marlinton (304-799-4087) which offered us and Milo, our Cheagle (Chihuahua/Beagle mix), a solid place to bunk and explore one of West Virginia’s largest counties.

Leaving Timberline on Monday, we had a gorgeous drive past Seneca Rocks on our way down WV 28 to “West Virginia’s Space Place” – Green Bank, W.Va.’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), only open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Mondays before Memorial Day, after which it is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. with hourly tours from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

With only a handful of the guided van tours going out off-season, we were questioning our timing when the receptionist took one look at our rough-hewn crew and quickly handed us a walking tour map. She told us we could take the dog on a free four-mile round-trip walking tour of the property, which saved us $20 (that the boys then quickly plowed back into gift shop souvenirs).

It is the rock star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson who says that “Everyone should have their mind blown once a day,” and NRAO’s excellent Science Center and trail that loops you past 10 telescopes all constantly mapping, exploring and further defining our galaxy is a mind-blow every few minutes.

Although the van tour builds up to the Green Bank Telescope, we, out slogging through the field with a surround sound of gurgling stream and the hum of the GBT were drawn magnetically straight through wood and field to the telescope that, at 485 feet tall, is bigger than Egypt’s Great Pyramid (450 feet) and dwarfs the Statue of Liberty (305 feet).

While the GBT has helped produce images of the surface of Venus, has detected three new pulsars and has helped generate a detailed image of the Orion Nebula, we were also equally impressed with the greatest hits of the smaller working telescopes along the way.

Nearly back to the Science Center we were surprised to see one satellite start moving when we walked by. Did it detect aliens (middle schoolers) in its presence?

Who knows for sure, but we stopped and were enthralled by the U.S. Naval Observatory’s 20-meter telescope (the fastest telescope on site) which can move two degrees per second and reach an opposite position in 90 seconds. We found out this was the telescope that measures the Earth’s orientation, rotation and motions of the continents, and which detected that Earth slows down in El Nino years.

With our minds effectively blown, we decided to leave the GBT to its job of detecting cosmic clues and get the Dave Trippin’ crew back on the road to explore more of expansive Pocahontas County, which, at 942 square miles, is the third largest county in West Virginia.

Known as the birthplace of river as Pocahontas County is the site of the headwaters for eight rivers Cherry River, Cranberry River, Elk River, Gauley River, Greenbrier River, Tygart Valley River, Williams River, and Shavers Fork of the Cheat River the area is best known as a warmer season destination for fishing, biking and hiking.

But for a modern family in much need of a forced “unplugged” session, the early arrival was right in time since we ran into no crowds, no cellphones and no worries.

With still inches of snow on the hills and trails we found Watoga (which has 10 year-round cabins) practically empty and with no cell service, ending up with some solid fam time at the cabin teaching the kids to play card games, playing with the dog, looking at the stars, going on hikes, building lots of fireplace fires, playing in the creek and even fishing with dental floss (more on that later).

Accurately touted as “Nature’s Mountain Playground,” Pocahontas is packed with must-see stops. You can’t do it all in a few days, but we tried.

With many places such as Cass still closed for the season, we laced up the hiking boots and with Will’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” soundtrack blasting we headed out for what Pocahontas County CVB calls its “Wonders and Waterfalls” tour which was broken into two days of themed exploring such places as Beartown State Park, Droop Mountain, Cranberry Glades and Falls of Hills Creek, all of which we checked out.

Although we had to punt trips to cool stops like the Pretty Penny Cafe (a popular live music spot in Hillsboro on the weekends) and the Pearl Buck homeplaces (both closed), over the course of a couple days we made slippery tracks at a handful of amazing places that were “bearly” open – since most places had few human tracks but some rather large clawed prints through the snow causing us all to pause and pray black bears do not prefer pasty white meat.

A must-stop is the Falls of Hills Creek.

Located on the Highland Scenic Highway (WV 39/55) the Falls trailhead is five miles west of Cranberry Mountain Visitor Center. The trail winds you down into a gorge to three falls (25, 45 and 63 feet), the last being the second highest waterfall in the state next to the famed Blackwater Falls.

We were at the falls on St. Patrick’s Day alone in a world still coated in icy white, waterfalls roaring with snowmelt, the only green being the hearty Giant Rhododendrons whose green umbrella-like leaves were still folded in, shuddering from the last brush of winter.

For waterfall freaks, you can read more about these falls and others in Kevin Adams book, “Waterfalls of Virginia and West Virginia,” and they are also featured in the “Monongahela National Forest Hiking Guide” by West Virginia Highlands Conservancy (a book I highly recommend for folks exploring the West Virginia mountains and the 900,000 – acre Mon).

While we unsuccessfully tried to take the untreated, unplowed and impassable with our minivan Highland Scenic Highway up to Marlinton, it’s highly recommended in season as the only U.S. Forest Service-managed parkway in the States, packed with 14 scenic stops including scenic overlooks and trails.

We popped onto U.S. 219 to roll into Marlinton, which is home to such lunch spots as Rayetta’s Lunch Box (304-799-4888) and the Greenbrier Grille and Lodge (304-799-7233) which has a restaurant, five rooms with private baths, and perhaps most important in these parts – Wi-Fi Internet access.

While the fam decided against sitting on the deck overlooking the Greenbrier River on the brisk afternoon, we had a ball watching a couple of giggling toddlers enjoying what the Grille is somewhat famous for, the feeding of the quite spoiled local duck population lapping up pellets from the river below.

The Grille also happens to be across the street from a simply stunning mural, “Over Bonnie” by Pocahontas County artist Molly Must, which pays tribute to the West Virginia poet laureate Louise McNeill, who passed away in 1993. The mural also pays homage to her father and fellow writer G. D. McNeill who was best known for his short stories about the forests of Pocahontas County.

As luck would have it (wow, I really did pack everything), I put the “Guardians of the Galaxy” soundtrack on pause, dug deep under the front passenger seat and popped in something more appropriate than “Hooked on a Feeling” – the new West Virginia audio poetry CD “My People Was Music.”

Backed by the world-famous Bing Brothers string band, West Virginia poet Kirk Judd waxes poetic on the magnificent sights of Pocahontas County and its inspiring people like the late, great poet Louise McNeill. To be able to listen to such incredible poems that are so firmly set in that place like “Cold Run,” “On Cranberry,” “The Ground of Eden,” “For Louise McNeill,” and “Beware!Meat Eating Plants Surround You,” was a real and rare treat for all of us.

With Judd’s earthy poems echoing in our ears we headed onto Droop Mountain to explore one of West Virginia’s smallest but most unique state parks, Beartown Rocks State Park.

Since our oldest son Jake and I had been there two years ago while accompanying Mike Sheets and his Western Virginia Military Academy (the Huntington Middle School Civil War re-enacting unit), we were stoked for Toril and Will to breathe in the bizarre wonder of Beartown, the 107-acre park known for its unusual sandstone rock formations.

Taking the boardwalk you wind through, below, beside and above a jaw-dropping assemblage of rocks and boulders strewn about the mountainside.

One of the first things I noticed – and pointed out to the boys – on this quiet return trip in winter was a weathered plaque tucked into the woods at the entrance that explains Beartown’s unique tie to Huntington. The land was purchased in 1970 with funds from the Nature Conservancy and a donation from Mrs. Edwin G. Polan, in memory of her son, Ronald Keith Neal, who lost his life in the Vietnam War.

With the afternoon sun gaining strength and sending the temperatures into the 60s our spirits were soaring. We drove back from Beartown, located on the eastern summit of Droop Mountain, to the Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park.