We woke up with Bluegrass music on our minds and listen to some Bluegrass while we were packing up our room. After breakfast, we headed out into a foggy foggy drive, about an hour down the road to the brand new in the US national park system in Park: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. This is a wilderness area that has been designated a protected river for a long time, but was upgraded two years ago to be a national park.
The park is actually four small areas within the much larger preserve. Since there are few roads in this region, visiting each of the areas requires going out to distant major roads and then back in to the next one. Directions and signs are poor in how to navigate and see everything. After seeing two of the areas, we failed in reaching the others, including the iconic high bridge, which is the most highly visited. We learned that this area has a million visitors a year. Most come from the north where the directions are easy. We were coming from the southeast. We did see the major falls, about 25 feet high, on the New River and the huge horseshoe bend from Grandview. We were so glad we saw these. Made the trip to the park definitely worth it.
For quite a while, searching for the high bridge, we wandered around through hallows and tiny unincorporated communities. Fascinating area! We finally ran into the main Highway that went to the city of Charleston, West Virgina. We decided that somehow, we had seen all that we were going to of this new national park. Sometimes you just have to let go of a destination.
We drove through Charleston and suddenly realized we were going to be very close to Blenko Glass. Dick remembered visiting there over 50 years ago. He still has glass in his office from that visit. The Blenko Glass Company was started in 1883. We spent some really wonderful time watching two glass blowers create a blown glass fish and talked with us about their glassblowing process. They were both very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. It was really a treat.
Then we spent time talking with the woman in the gift shop and picked out a couple of beautiful items to bring back home with us. We both love glass and we’re happy to add a beautiful tall, decorative water bottle and elephant bookends to our glass collection.
Then we drove for a couple more hours, mostly through the rain. We arrived in Lexington Kentucky in time for dinner. We decided to go to Mimi’s Southern Cooking. The food was homemade and we got huge portions. Delicious!
Then, a laid back evening working on pictures and catching up on news. Here we are now in Kentucky.
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