West Virginia - Day 10
- nacaruso3
- Sep 15
- 5 min read
15-Aug-2025
Day 10 of my West Virginia Adventure. I started out the day trying to find the Bell in Washington County, PA which is part of the Bells Across PA initiative to celebrate the 250th anniversary (semiquincentennial, bisesquicentennial, or sestercentennial) of America in 2026. There will be 108 bells, at least one in each of the 67 counties. The complete list and locations of each bell will not be available until January of next year. All bells will have to be up by December 31st of this year and will be displayed until at least December 31st of 2026. This one happened to be installed a couple of weeks ago, so I figured I’d check it out. The website said that it was at the Washington County Historical society and there were pictures of the bell being unveiled in the garden outside. I got there shortly before the historical society opened and walked around the garden. No bell. I waited until 9am and the building still wasn’t open. Fortunately, before I gave up, someone who worked there was coming out of a building across the street and brought me over to THAT building to see the bell. So much for directions. I guess West Virginia is not alone in that respect.
Ok… enough about PA. This trip is about West Virginia. My next stop was Mason Dixon Park. I somehow missed the sign to the park the first time but I finally found it. I parked near the baseball field (as specified on the website) and ventured out. The trail didn’t start right at the parking lot, but I found it quickly enough. After getting pictures at the swing, I continued on to Tucker Falls, which was a bit farther down the trail. I wasn’t sure that I was heading in the right direction because I didn’t hear any water flowing. When I got there, I figured out why… because there was NO WATER flowing at Tucker Falls! I do wonder how some of these waterfalls made it to the list of the top 43 waterfalls in West Virginia. I wasn’t expecting Niagara Falls, but I expected to see at least SOME water at the waterfalls that made the highlight list! I took a detour on the way back to the car to go down the Bluebell/Fairy Door Trail, which had many fairy homes along the path. Once I got to the end of that path, there were no signs to get back to the parking lot, but the river was on my right heading there, so I figured it had to be on my left heading back and I found my way back to the car. I drove to the other parking lot in the park so that I could hike to the westernmost point of the Mason-Dixon Line. The park website says that “This trail is very steep at the beginning, but once on the top of the ridge, it levels out for a beautiful hilltop hike. From the parking lot, it takes 1,140 steps to reach the Mason-Dixon Marker Stone.” First of all, from the parking lot, you have NO IDEA where the trail actually starts. It is a climb up a hill to just get to the start of the trail. Secondly, most of it was a hill… not just at the beginning. Third of all, the stone was not accessible (unless I wanted to walk through very thick brush). Instead, there was a sign showing how far the marker was from that point. Fourth of all (fourthly?), it was over 1500 steps to the parking lot. Accurate expectation setting is not a strong point in West Virginia!!
I was happy to get into my nice air conditioned car after that walk! My next stop was the Almost Heaven Swing at Coopers Rock State Forest. The directions for this one took me to the ranger station. The ranger was nice enough to give me directions… turns out, the swing was > 3 miles from there. This swing was right near a gift shop, so once again, I have no idea why they couldn’t use that as the address of the swing. At least it was an easy 3 miles on a paved road with signs leading to the gift shop. This was the most crowded area of any of the swings that I had been to on my trip. When I got to the swing, there was a couple taking pictures and they asked me if I wanted them to take my picture. I said yes and handed them my phone. While we were making the exchange, two other people got on the swing to take pictures. Then two more people jumped in. It was as if we weren’t standing there! When it looked like they were about to leave, one of the people told her friend that, “I’m just going to sit here for a while,” and just sat on the swing as if there was nobody else waiting to take a picture! The nerve!! I stifled my NY-er tongue (aren’t you proud of me?) and didn’t say a word. She finally realized that we were waiting to take a picture and got up. From there, I walked to the overlook to see yet another beautiful view.
This was my 41st swing. Other than the two that I couldn’t get to (no, I never got a phone call back from the ATV place), my mission was complete! There was still one more waterfall on my way home (Muddy Creek Falls). There was a small pull-off on the side of the road and then a short walk to the falls. I took one more detour to go to the Oldtown Toll Bridge before finally heading home. This bridge was built in 1938 and goes from Oldtown, MD to Green Springs, WV. It is the only privately owned toll bridge in MD (there are a few others in the US). The bridge is 200 feet long and 10 feet wide and is probably the ricketiest bridge that I’ve ever seen!! I approached it from the MD side, so I had to make a round trip to continue home. I paid my $3 ($1.50 each way) to the toll booth operator who held out a little tin cup to collect my money.
My trip in a nutshell… 10 days. Over 3000 miles driven. Over 112,000 steps walked. 1 scenic train ride. 4 1/2 audio books. 41 swings. Lots of waterfalls. This was quite an adventure. I questioned my life choices several times on this trip, but I made it home alive!
I know that I’m about a month late with all of these posts, but I wasn’t sure that I was going to start this blog. I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about my adventures. Stay tuned for my future trips (I have 3 more trips planned this year).
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