GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
Things to Do in West Virginia
*For the top yearly events of West Virginia, click here.
West Virginia proclaims itself as "Wild and Wonderful," so much of what the state is famous for is outdoor activities like skiing, hiking, climbing, and whitewater rafting. For some of the best skiing, snowboarding, or tubing, visit Winterplace in Ghent or Snowshoe Mountain in Snowshoe. Winterplace has 9 lifts and 27 trails, and nearby Glade Springs Resort is a great place to stay, surrounded by mountains, with a spa and horseback riding. Snowshoe has 57 trails! With the snow covered pines and chateaus, you'll get the full mountain town atmosphere which is simply beautiful.
Whitewater rafting is another extremely fun activity to do while in West Virginia. People typically raft the New River and Gauley River...but, during the 6 weekends after labor day each year, they open the dam for what they call "Gauley Season." For those 6 weeks, the Gauley is the 5th best rafting river in the world, 2nd best in the US with Class III, Class IV, and even Class V rafting. The river can be split to do just the Upper Gauley (the harder part), the lower Gauley (a little easier), or make a day of it and do the whole thing. If you do the whole thing, there's a total of 6 Class V's and a lot of Class IV's and III's.
Whitewater Rafting Companies: Ace Adventures Resort does rafting, horseback riding, zip lining, and has a fun summer camp feel to its cabins and main dining hall beside a lake with swimming and giant inflatables. Adventures on the Gorge offers rafting, zip lining, and spelunking. Others include New & Gauley River Adventures and River Expeditions.
Fairmont
Prickett's Fort was a wooden fort for Colonial Virginia to seek refuge from Native American war parties. Today, its recreation has been turned into a park offering fishing, hiking, biking, an amphitheater and, of course, historical crafts, blacksmithing, a visitor center, reenactments, and the fort itself.
Fayetteville
New River Gorge, in the Appalachian Mountains, is the gorge cut by the whitewater flow of one of the oldest rivers in North America, the New River. People hit the area to camp, hike, bike, kayak, climb, and whitewater raft. The New River Gorge Bridge is one of the most photographed places in West Virginia and its own tourist attraction. It's the longest steep span bridge in the western hemisphere and the 3rd highest bridge in the US. The New River Gorge Bridge Walk lets brave visitors venture across the bridge's catwalk across the gorge 851 feet above the river!
Moundsville
Moundsville and Weston (below) are known for being two of the most haunted places in the country to visit. West Virginia State Penitentiary is a gothic style prison that operated between 1876 and 1995. The prison executed 85 men by hanging and 9 by electrocution, but hundreds more died through the years of suicide and violence. This violent past has supposedly left its mark on the prison in the form of ghosts!
To add to this atmosphere, the prison now has a dungeon of horrors, a maze, and a ghost hunt as part of the fun during tours. Tours can be history tours in the day or paranormal ghost tours at night or even OVERnight! The nighttime and OVER night tours are so scary, they require everyone to be 15 or older.
Grave Creek Mound, where the town gets its name, is another site to see while you're in town. The mound, 62 feet high and 240 feet in diameter and made of more than 60,000 tons of dirt, is the burial site of Adena people from 250-150 BC and is one of the largest burial mounds in the country.
West Virginia State Penitentiary
Weston
Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, much like the West Virginia State Penitentiary, is haunted by its violent past. It operated as a psychiatric hospital from 1864 to 1994. Thousands were committed there, and over the years, hundreds died within its halls. Reportedly a very haunted site, many of the paranormal investigative shows, like Ghost Hunters, have done episodes about this place.
It is also the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America, and is the second largest in the world, next to the Kremlin.
The Asylum has history tours and paranormal tours as well, along with the inclusion of its own overnight ghost hunts. I didn't see an age restrictions on the website, but we plan to hit both this place and the penitentiary once our boys turn 15 so that we can scare the bejesus out of them all at once!
