West Virginia - Day 9
- nacaruso3
- Sep 14
- 3 min read
14-Aug-2025
Day 9 of my West Virginia Adventure. After three nights in Beckley, it’s time to move on. I was planning to do the drive by the New River Gorge Bridge this morning since I ran out of light last night. It was so foggy when I left the hotel that I almost decided to skip it, but then I figured that some pictures of the bridge in the fog might look really cool, so I stuck with my original plan. I stopped several times along the way to get some pictures and I’m so glad that I took the time to take this drive. The bridge is spectacular! Funny enough, when you drive over the bridge, you have no idea of what you’re driving over because it just looks like a normal road.
From the New River Gorge Bridge, it was about 3 ½ hours to my next destination in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. Before I went to any swings, I stopped at the Fostoria Glass Museum. I think that the wine glasses that my parents had were Fostoria. I found a glass teacup in the museum with the exact same flower etched into it! My first swing was at Grand Vue Park. The directions brought me to the ziplining place in the park… no swing in sight. The people at the ziplining place tried to give me directions to the swing, but their directions were a bit confusing. After driving around a bit and asking some more people, I finally found it. My next stop was Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold. They were doing renovations on the palace when I got there, and one of the domes was covered, but it was certainly one of the most ornate places I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t sure if they were open for tours, so I decided to just snap a couple of pictures and continue on my way.
My next swing was at Oglebay Park Resort. The directions brought me to the zoo, which was fortunately still open so I could get directions to the swing. From there, I went to Wheeling Heritage Port where the swing was exactly where it was supposed to be! I took a walk around the area before heading to my last swing of the day. Driving into Ohio was once again the fastest way to get to my next stop in West Virginia. When I got to Tomlinson Run State Park, the swing was supposed to be “at the end of the Jody Hulka Trail, which is ADA accessible”. Driving around, there are no signs for the Jody Hulka Trail. I finally pulled into a gravel parking lot and found a tiny sign for the Jody Hula Trail. Turns out I should have parked two parking lots ago, but how was I to know? At no point was this trail ADA accessible, even if I had parked in the right place. You had to walk on a gravel trail to get to any paved areas and the paved areas were so severely buckled in places that I can’t imagine navigating these trails in a wheelchair… unless they have ATV wheelchairs in West Virginia?
My last planned stop for the day was in Chester, WV where they have the World’s Largest Teapot. I grabbed a quick picture there and then looked for somewhere to have dinner. I picked a place called Saddle Ridge. They were having a game show night and they asked me to join the fun (even though I got there after the first round was over). It was run very differently from the trivia nights that I’m used to, but it added some unexpected entertainment to my evening. The restaurant was about an hour away from the hotel that I had picked in Washington, PA. I was going to have to drive through PA to get to the next swing (about 2 hours from Chester), so I figured I’d do half of the drive tonight and the other half in the morning.
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