It's Falling - Road Trip in West Virginia, USA Posted on: 15 October 2017 :: Photo Credits: Pradip Gatkine, Pranav Bende, Alankar Kotwal, Alap Kshirsagar, Rachit Aggarwal ::
Previous article: Turkish Delight, Layover in Istanbul
Preface
Fall is here! The frenzied first half of my first semester at Cornell came to an end with a well-deserved fall break. As the saying goes “Happiness is....a road trip with friends”, we decided to go on a road-trip. [here we: 5 friends from IIT-B now studying in different parts of US: Alap (Ithaca, New York), Pradip and Pranav (College Park, Maryland), Rachit (Columbus, Ohio), Alankar (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) (last minute addition!)]. Rachit's driving skills made the trip possible. We narrowed down on West Virginia state for the road-trip as it had some of the most scenic routes in US, especially during Fall. Pradip took care of planning the route/activities (#PradipPlanning). We decided to meet at Pittsburgh since it was equidistant from our cities.
Day 0: 6 October 2017 (Friday)
Location: Ithaca-Scranton-Harrisburg-Pittsburgh
Thanks to the ‘scenic’ (read: remote and not well connected ) location of Ithaca, I had to take a 14hr Greyhound bus (with 2 changes) to reach Pittsburgh. But it was a blessing as it gave me much-needed solitude to ponder upon research directions :) During the stopover at Harrisburg (capital of Pennsylvania), I had a couple of hours to walk along the banks of Susquehanna River and explore the area around Capitol complex. The town was pretty much ‘lifeless’ around midnight as expected.
Day 1: 7 October 2017 (Saturday)
Location: Pittsburgh-Durbin-Green Bank- Snowshoe
We left Pittsburgh around 9AM and drove towards our first destination: Durbin. Except for one incidence, where we had a close escape from remnants of a burst trailer tyre a few meters ahead of our car (reminded us of Final Destination movie!), this 200mile (5hrs) drive was very entertaining. Pleasant weather, scenic route, awesome stereo system of the car and a funny gang! (fighting for the front seat similar to this video: TVF's front seat Qtiyapa )!
After a small goof-up (google maps leading us to a dead-end), we managed to reach Durbin just-in-time to board the ‘Durbin Rocket’. This century old excursion train is powered by a steam engine locomotive! It was a wonderful 10.5mile round-trip (~2hr) through the Monongahela National Forest.
Our next destination was Green Bank Telescope (GBT), world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. The region around this telescope is designated as United States National Radio Quiet Zone and thus there was no network coverage. So relying on the ‘cached’ google map we managed to reach the Green Bank Science Centre just before the last tour at 6PM.
The tour guide gave a small presentation about the history of GBT and then drove us to base of the telescope in a minibus. This 148m tall and 100m diameter engineering marvel looked like a giant (1.6 times the height of statue of liberty! The locals sometimes call it the ‘Great Big Thing’ source: wikipedia).
After the tour, we drove towards ‘Inn at Snowshoe’, a resort situated near the Snowshoe mountain. Our ‘suite’ turned out to be a pleasant surprise! It had 2 bathrooms, 1 huge living room with (extremely!) comfortable couch, well-equipped kitchen and dining area and a 4-bed room. All this just for 20$ per person (Pradip has an amazing talent of finding such awesome deals!). The resort also had a jacuzzi and indoor pool, unfortunately it was under renovation at the time. After checking-in and resting for some time, we went out to get dinner. Surprisingly, all the restaurants were already closed by 9.30PM. So we had to survive on frozen food bought from a gas-station store called ‘Parmar store’ (sounded Indian but it wasn’t!). While baking the frozen pizza in our kitchen, we managed to set off the fire alarm! Luckily, there were no repercussions and we could sleep peacefully.
Day 2: 8 October 2017 (Sunday)
Location: Snowshoe-Seneca Rocks-Blackwater Falls-Pittsburgh
Our day began with all-you-can-eat breakfast at the resort. The weather was a bit foggy and it was drizzling outside.
We had planned to drive towards ‘Seneca rocks’, but again a pleasant surprise awaited us. While checking-out from the Inn at Snowshoe, Pradip got us complementary passes to the ski lift-rides on Snowshoe Mountain. As we drove up the mountain, the fog got denser. The ski lift itself was covered in fog.
The base station of the lift was situated beside a small lake. The lake was surrounded by hills covered in Fall colours. It was a breath-taking sight indeed!
Eventually the fog cleared up and we went for another ride on the lift to see the heavenly vista again. We could have kept doing these rides forever (our complementary passes had free unlimited rides!), but decided to get back to the town as hunger rolled in.
After lunch we proceeded to our next destination: Seneca rocks state park . Again the route was very scenic! The hills covered in fall colours looked delicious (‘Spiced’ broccoli :P)
We arrived at the Seneca Rocks discovery center around 3.30PM. Seneca rocks is one of the best-known and challenging attractions in West Virginia for rock climbing . But we decided to take a tour of the Seneca caverns as none of us knew anything about rock-climbing.
The caverns had visually stunning and unique geological formations. In this 1hr tour, our ‘fiction-enthusiast’ guide led us along the lit pathways and showed areas of special interests in the caverns which went up-to 165feet below the ground. We even got to experience the ‘cave darkness’.
The last destination of our roadtrip in West Virginia was Blackwater Falls State Park. The centrepiece ‘Blackwater Falls’ is one of the most photographed venues in the state! (source: wikipedia) .
We returned to Pittsburgh at midnight and went up the Mt. Washington to see some stunning nightime views of the city.
