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| I stayed with the cousin on the far right. I'm second from the left. |
Ward and I struck out on our own today to visit North Bend State Park. I hadn't been there since I was a child and wanted to see it again. This is one of many places where I've wanted to stop over the years when we were on the way to visit my parents. But the visit with them was always more important than sightseeing, so I just tucked the ideas away. Now our time is freer, so we're exploring some of these places.
North Bend is one of the many good state parks in West Virginia. It has cabins, a lodge, camping spots, a lake, a swimming pool, and many hiking trails. We drove around and got a feel for the park and then hiked on two different trails. It was all going well until Ward got a call from work that needed attention. We had to cut our visit short and go into town to find WiFi for him. But when you're on vacation, even work doesn't bother you, so all was good. North Bend is definitely a place that we plan to visit again in the future.
We ended the day with a cookout with more of my cousins. The family we were visiting had four sisters just like in my family and when they were all together it got lively. I turned to Ward and said, "See, it's just not me and my sisters, it's them too. It's all normal." :)
Here are a few pictures from our visit to the park.
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| We enjoyed wildflowers in bloom along the trails we hiked. |
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| The trail went up a steep hill next to a creek. |
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| Ward investigated a cave we found along the way. |
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| Bluets |
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| A family of geese were enjoying the lake. |
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| The park hooks up with the 72 mile Rail Trail that goes through north central WV. |
The excitement continues on Day Three-coming soon. :)
*The town where we stayed is on the Ohio River, so we were back and forth between WV and OH several times. So actually, this was our trip to WV, MD, and OH.
