Chasing waterfalls at Blackwater Falls State Park + Bear Rocks at Dolly Sods (West Virginia)

We have made it to West Virginia, another brand new state for us. In our last vlog, we stuffed our faces with some iconic West Virginia foods including pepperoni rolls, hot dogs, and biscuits. We've driven about two hours southeast to experience some of the beautiful nature that West Virginia is known for, including waterfalls and mountain views, starting with a quick hike to Lindy Point Overlook at Blackwater Falls State Park. This overlook viewpoint is absolutely beautiful. The fall colors are like just starting to like poke out on all the green trees, and just the trees overall, it's like a blanket or a carpet just over the hills. It just looks so smooth and beautiful, and we're here at sunrise, and we're the only ones here, and it's absolutely magical. The sun hasn't risen yet, but it's still just gorgeous. As you're driving through Blackwater Falls State Park, it's very just like foresty tree roads, so you'd have no idea that just on the other side is this Blackwater Canyon. It's crazy, and it's only a 0.8 mile round-trip hike from the parking lot to Lindy Point Overlook. Super easy, yeah. Super easy. Man, great, great nature introduction to West Virginia. I can't even imagine how epic this place will be in like two weeks. Yeah, like two weeks. When the colors are just popping off. Yeah, I really like it too, the rocks that kind of poke out in some areas. This is really cool overlook. Just tons of like green mountains and hills, but then like rocks that just jut out. The scenery... You're winning me over, West Virginia. We love it. The sun is popping out, and it's hitting the trees, and like the fall colored trees, and they look so orange, and yellow, and red. Warning, this vlog is just going to be me gushing about the fall colors probably. This spot is really hard to leave, but all good things must come to an end, so we're going to head back to the van and chase some waterfalls. First up on our little West Virginia waterfall tour, we're going to is I think how you say it. It's in Blackwater Falls State Park. We just parked at the lodge, and then you'll see a little sign, kind of just between some trees, that says Elacala Falls Trail. So we don't know how long it is. We kind of had a hard time finding some information about some things in this park, so we're winging it a bit today. But I think according to the map, it looks like it should be pretty close. We made it to Elacala Falls, one of those two. But yeah, about 30 seconds to a minute after Katherine's telling you where we were going, we come across this bridge up here, and then you walk down along the way, and then you're right at the foot of the waterfall. Beautiful, just cascading down the rocks. There's a bridge in the background. Yeah, really neat. Next up on our waterfall adventure is the namesake of this park, Blackwater Falls, and we parked at this area called the Trading Post. It seems like it's kind of a main area, and we're not 100% sure, but something we wanted to mention was, we think it's free to enter this park. There's no one to pay. We haven't gone through a gate. So it's kind of rare for a state park like this, so extra points for Blackwater Falls. There's also two different areas you can park in to access Blackwater Falls. Where we parked at the Trading Post, you take a ton of stairs down. This main area where you can see the falls, but then you have to take more stairs down to, I guess, the bottom of them. There's also the Gentle Trail, which is a paved, kind of, just like a paved route. I think in case you're in a wheelchair, you can't handle stairs. You can't go all the way to the bottom, but you can still see a view of the falls. Beautiful! So Blackwater Falls is 57 feet tall, and I just read on the sign that the river is called Blackwater because of the dark reddish-brown appearance of the water, almost like tea. So if you come during the peak waterfall season, I think the waterfall is like a solid thick sheet of water. But we're kind of liking this, like, triple waterfall action going on. And the middle one is, like, splashing off of separate, like, rocks. It looks really cool. We have one more waterfall we want to go check out today, which is actually outside of Blackwater Falls State Park. But first, we're driving about 10 minutes to this cute little town called Thomas to grab ourselves some coffee. First off, the town of Thomas is absolutely adorable. It's basically just a strip with shops and restaurants and really old, historic, beautiful buildings. And there's a river right here, and the leaves are changing. It's just, like, the cute... It's just very... Fall overload. ...picturesque. And in Thomas, we went to a coffee shop called Tip Top, which was also very cool on the inside. Yeah, so we got a latte. This is a cardamom latte, and I chose this, and I don't know... This came out of left field for me, but it sounded kind of fall-y, spicy kind of a thing. But the star of the show is a pumpkin spice cold brew. Looks awesome. Canned, yeah, canned latte drink. So it says it has 40-weight, which I guess is a coffee company, espresso, holy cacao, organic pumpkin syrup, oatly oat milk, and it has love in it. Very nice. I'm super basic. Love me some pumpkin spice. It's our first pumpkin drink of the season. Yeah, they only make a limited run of these, and I think... What did you say? There's 50 of them? 50 of them at both of their shops. Yeah. And when they had them the other day, they ran out by, like, one, but they had a lot left, and we got one. We should have gotten, like, five. One of the lucky few. It smells just like fall. I'm going to get seven more. Is it good? Wow, that is amazing. In college, I used to drink pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks almost, like, every single day. Now we try to limit it to a few times in the fall because they're not usually the healthiest, but dang, this thing is so good. Get you some of this. I like how it's, like, the custom can. Like, they just throw the sticker on there. The branding's really cute, and we really like that. Smells like pumpkin spice. It's really good. You can just chug this. It's so good. I know. We're gonna have to savor that. That is delicious. Oh my goodness. Let's not leave a little cardamom behind. Ooh, that's good. How is it? Yeah, it has, like, a... I don't really know what cardamom tastes like, but it tastes, I think, like cardamom. Oh, that's very cardamom-y. Yeah, it has a good, like, spicy flavor. Cool cups, too, huh? I'm just so excited. Yeah, fall's coming, y'all. Fall's the best. Also, we realized yesterday that we haven't really actually seen a true fall. Growing up in Texas, it's hot, hot, hot, hot. And then one weekend, it'll freeze. All the trees will die. All the leaves will fall. And then that's your fall. You don't really get much of the colors there. And then in Washington, there's a lot of evergreen trees. So those stay green. And then there's larches, which turn this beautiful yellow. And then, like, in our neighborhood and stuff, we'd have some colorful trees. But we've never actually seen, like, that iconic, just endless... Like, a few weeks of, like, crazy colors. Oranges. So we're so excited. Fall's our favorite season. Just, we love the weather, the coziness, just the best. And so we're really excited to be here in the eastern part of the U.S. to experience a true fall this year. One thing we really love about Thomas is it doesn't feel, like, touristy. It has more of, like, an authentic feel to us still. And a lot of really cool local shops. They also have signs all around town telling you about the history of Thomas. And a couple things we learned is that with the boom of mining, this town also boomed and kind of became, like, a small cosmopolitan. Area. And a lot of people were moving here. And something interesting, we noticed this on some of the buildings. They have, like, metal balconies. And it said that that was to kind of give the town a European feel because of some of the European immigrants coming here. We're on our way to our next waterfall, which is Douglas Falls. But on the dirt road to it, it's about a little over a mile to it. There's, like, remains of these coal mines. And we just read the sign. So they turned coal into coke, which we had no idea what coke was. So apparently, they mine coal out of here and then they turn it into a fuel, which is sent to the coal, the steel mine or steel mills to make steel. So it's fuel for the steel mills. You learn something every day. This is very interesting, especially the ruins here. The not ruins, but the remnants. Yeah, interesting. We got the van parked. Like I said earlier, the road is not very long. But boy, is it bumpy. And yeah, crazy. Van was like... The drawer flew open, which happens more often than we'd like to admit. Yeah, there was water going over the road. So we had to go through a few puddles. And over the sketchiest bridge we've probably ever driven on in the van. Yeah, we made it. So there's this parking area and it says road closed in 500 feet. And so we're just walking on that road along a really pretty river. Yeah. And the water color is very interesting. It's like this, like, glacier blue almost. And we read it's from the coke. The coke runoff, I guess, from the ovens back up the river. Yeah. So we had heard it was a pretty quick walk to Douglas Falls. So we basically parked, walked down the road until the road closed sign. And there's this little path that looks like it's right down to the falls. So super quick and easy, I think. It does look a little steep and maybe slick. You love the rope ones. They have a rope you can hold on to. Oh, yeah, right here. Oh, I don't think you need it though. But do it, I guess, in case you feel nervous. So there's different areas. There's the main waterfall up here. Then it just keeps cascading down and down and down. You can go way down there even. There's lots of areas to explore. But be very careful if you come down here. Every rock is super slick. I think we both agree that that was our favorite waterfall of the day. But man, it was so slick. I 100% fell, like, actually busted my butt down by the waterfall. So be very careful. We opted to not have Kona come with us on this one just because we heard it was slick. And I'm really glad because she probably would have, like, pulled us down rocks or something. It's pretty rugged and, yeah, like we said, very slick. So that would have been really tricky. You're really tight in places. You gotta crawl through the roots of the fallen tree and stuff. Yeah, so keep that in mind for dogs, for kids, for those who maybe can't do steep inclines and slick stuff as much. But, oh, it was totally worth it. You can get there. It's worth it. So there's another waterfall along the road that you drive on to get to Douglas Falls. It looks really pretty. And it's just right off the road and you just pull off. But there really wasn't that much space for us to pull off in our van. But if you're here in a smaller car, definitely go check it out. The water is so beautiful blue color. It's crazy. Next up, we're going to an area called the Dolly Sods. It's actually not too far from here, but we've got to go way around. So it'll take about an hour to get there. We just assumed since this is a popular thing to do in the area, that the road would be paved. It would be like a touristy kind of thing. But we're on a very kind of narrow dirt road. Yeah, it's pretty bumpy. Very steep. It's just like climbing, climbing, climbing. Yeah, I thought this was, you know, a popular pull off or something. But this makes it cooler though. This makes it cooler because it feels more wildernessy and off the beaten path. Some guy in a van just told us to roll down our window when he was passing us. A small van. A smaller, much smaller van than ours. And said that it's super packed and he could barely get through in his van. So we'll see how this goes. It might be a really rough road steep fail. Ain't happening. This is a disaster. Wow, it's so busy. We need either this truck or that car to move so we can squeeze through and then probably just keep going down this road. We're very fortunate that there was a spot that we could fit in. Yeah. Right before we couldn't go any farther. Yeah, there could have been a car right here and then. We would have been just stuck in the road. We would have stopped traffic. So we're lucky we at least were able to pull over to the side right in front of the car. And people can still pass us. And then they just have to try to squeeze through those two cars that are kind of in the way. So I don't know. We're just sitting here waiting now. Kind of at the mercy of these two people. Kind of sucks. We're just hoping that these two people aren't gone for hours. Yeah, hopefully they're not on a backpacking trip. Yeah, but we might we might get out and go explore. I think I feel okay about the van. We're not really sticking out. We're not really in the way. So I think we could go look around a bit. It's very beautiful. The view looks awesome. Oh yeah, it's beautiful up here. No wonder it's so busy. Yeah, very unique landscape. Yeah, so yeah, we might show you. We decided to venture out of the van. We figure we're stuck here anyway. So we might as well go enjoy the view. Show you guys the view. And we're at Bear Rocks Preserve in the Dolly Sods. We put Bear Rocks Preserve in Google Maps. We heard this is a good spot. A lot of the hikes in the Dolly Sods area are really long. A lot of people do backpacking trips. So we found this spot and it looks like something quick and easy to stop at. And clearly it's very, very popular. The scenery here though is just super unique. You got tons of crazy mountain views out that way. It's all these rocks just kind of poking out that you kind of walk and crawl on. Obviously tons of trees. But then there's like... It feels like ivy or like bushes like over some of the rocks that are turning red. Those fall colors again. It's really beautiful and just really unique. Dolly Sods is on the Allegheny Front which runs from New York all the way down to Tennessee. This is also part of the Eastern Continental Divide. So any water that falls on the west side of the mountain flows to the Mississippi then flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Anything that falls on the east flows down to Chesapeake Bay. Bear Rocks Preserve was amazing. Yeah, super cool up here. Very beautiful. Yeah, like Adam said, it's just really unique. It's very rocky. There's no... I mean there's probably trails but we were just kind of climbing on rocks and seeing the mountains and the red covered kind of grassy areas. It's just really really beautiful. I can see why it's so packed. Kind of a choose-your-own-adventure kind of a deal. The area we were at. Yeah, but it's super beautiful and good news you guys. As we got back to the van we saw people lurking in the window of one of the cars we need to move. So we went and asked them, Hey, is this your car? And they said, no, it's our friend's and they should be coming soon. So we're almost out. Hopefully 30-40 minutes they said. Yeah, so the end is almost near. We were kind of afraid that we'd be stuck here all night. Yeah, we were coming back to the van like kind of defeated. Like, let's just go and sulk, I guess. Yeah, we were pretty stressed. We've been pretty stressed the last hour but it's all gonna work out. It's gonna be okay. We got to see Bear Rocks Preserve and we're not trapped forever. Victory! Now we just gotta get out of the parking lot area here. All right, we're finally out of the, I guess you could say the woods. We're out of the parking lot woods. It was very hairy. Like, it was one lane and then there was some other oncoming traffic. We had to find a spot to pull off and it was tricky. But if you can, I recommend bringing a smart car. Like, rent a smart car to come up here. Now we have about a two-hour drive to our campground. Since we can only go this way out, we're having to take the long way there. And we're going far away because where we're going tomorrow is a couple hours away. Like, two and a half or so hours. So we're trying to get a little bit closer to where we'll be tomorrow. All right, as you can see, we are at a Cracker Barrel. Not a sweet campsite where we're getting ready to set up a nice fire with a nice dinner. It's van life for you, I guess. Yeah, we should have guessed it would probably be full. It was more like a campground, not just like random land. Yeah, it was full. So, got there. There weren't a lot of sites there and it was like six o'clock on a Saturday evening. Yeah, it was, again, not... Long shot. Not the best planning. So, yeah, the end of the day was a little stressful at times. Things went a little south towards the end of this vlog, so we apologize. But it was kind of a very accurate representation of what our life looks like most of the time. The van sometimes doesn't always fit everywhere. We have to figure out where to sleep every single night. This is our third Cracker Barrel in four nights because finding free parking on the East Coast is really, really hard. There's not a lot of free public land and BLM land, stuff like that. Yeah, so, you know what? The positive thing, though, is we are about 45 minutes closer to where we're going tomorrow. We have cell phone service so we can work tonight. And maybe we'll get ourselves a little Cracker Barrel treat. Hey, yo! If you haven't been to Cracker Barrel, you need to go and get the biscuits. Those are good enough to go on their own. They have a ton of like really cool candies. We don't know. We didn't... I mean, we don't know because we bought some earlier this week or anything like that. And fudge. But, yeah, so the day had some stressful times. But we will say, as we were driving through West Virginia... We're now in Virginia, actually. But as we were driving through West Virginia, we were just like mind blown by how gorgeous it is. It's so... There's just so much land. It's just vast land and mountains and small towns. It's just really, really beautiful. Everywhere you go is really beautiful. It's really mountainous and hilly and stuff. So it's kind of fun to drive in the van. Kind of stressful at times, but it's fun. But it's just so beautiful and... The day today was beautiful. Everything we did was so much fun and so gorgeous, even with the hiccups. So we're not letting the hiccups ruin our day. The day was awesome. For sure. And it just got us even more excited to explore more of West Virginia. So we're gonna just relax. I think we're both a little stressed, to be honest, from just how the day went towards the end. It was a long afternoon. Yeah, we're really hungry. So we're just gonna relax, eat, go to bed. But we will see you guys tomorrow morning because we're going to Harper's Ferry. It's Han Solo season, baby! Dance with love and taste like lusting manchild. Come and surprise his enormous butt with aches of soul after rainbow bliss. Rainbow bliss. All women will shake with ecstatic vibration, a central from Martin's feel. Follow barefoot possibility through the world above. You guys shouldn't have filmed these. Some of these are a little risqué. Really? Oh, hi.