We left Elkins and headed toward a tiny Forest Service campground called “Bear Heaven.” Only 8 tent sites, and only 2 guys were there with us - Mike and Eddie! We had fun talking with them for a bit, real mountain men. Cousins. It is totally hidden, we had to drive back and forth to find it, and I only happened to look on the side of the road and saw a sign pointing toward it. It’s 4 miles up a gravel mountain road with a steep slope on one side of the 1-lane road. It was raining, too, which made me really nervous.
Tucking in for more rainy days.
It was absolutely beautiful, and had thick fog running in and out the whole time. the back of the site was trail that ended in a sheer cliff. Sadly, this whole area has been sold off for data centers. It’ll be cleared out and built into a data center site, like many other parts of West Virginia. It makes my blood boil, but I am glad we were able to enjoy its splendid, undeveloped and unspoiled era.
This time, since we had the car next to us, I split up the dry wood we had for tinder. We didn’t have trouble starting the fires, but we DID have trouble keeping them going through the rain.
Can you see the well camouflaged froggie?
A tiny snail without its shell. It was about an inch long :)
There was a great trail at the end of the campground road with HUGE boulders. It looked like somewhere in Asia or the Amazon! We had fun tooling around it.
Some more Komorebi Photography:
When in Appalachia…
The always present fog:
Magic hour and nighttime in the rainy woods:
So many spiders here too! And birds, frogs, worms, caterpillars, moths… All signs point to a really healthy forest! We were actually INUNDATED by inch worms, it was unpleasant. Couldn’t get away from them, they were hanging from the trees by the hundred thousand. I carried them from here to the 2 hotels, the airport, and I just found one crawling in our bathroom in Brooklyn haha. Thankfully this giant spider was OUTSIDE the tent.
We were getting damn tired of the rain by now. And little did we know a HUGE, scary thunderstorm was just about to swoop down on us.
Every once in a while the sun would peek out for about 20 minutes so we could explore.
This rock was as big as a building:
Adorable eft.
The fog started to get thicker, and boy did we get a thunderstorm. It was a terrifying 45 minutes of thunder, lightning and POURING rain 4 miles up a mountain. Thankfully there was hardly any wind or I would have been crying. We didn’t speak or even think for the worst stretch. We were just calm somehow. I was scared to death, but my body was on pause until the most fierce part blew over. I think it was then that we decided we weren’t going to do one more night of backcountry like we had planned. The trail would be impossibly muddy, and I had no idea what condition the mountain road was in. Plus, we were DONE with huddling from the rain under the tarp.
When it finally passed, the whole campground was shrouded in fog. It was quiet, still, wet, and glorious. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in the Pacific Northwest!
The empty campsites were especially spooky.
I wasn’t as worried about the road being flooded 4 miles up, I was worried about what it would look like at the bottom. Turns out after a drought, the mountains are very, very thirsty. I think we got lucky, not sure they would be so thirsty in August. This area even got hit by Helene a couple of years ago!
It smelled GREAT after that fierce thunderstorm. Like breathing tree vapor.
Our last fire…
So off we went from Bear Heaven Campground. A magical, albeit wet, 2 days.
See the last leg of the trip in Buckhannon and back to Pittsburgh >