Sunday, September 6

I was awake early (5 AM) so got ready for an outside walk. This is the attractive hallway outside our room. There are three other rooms in this building – each on the right side of the hallway.

This is the Guest House – just across the driveway from the Carriage House where we stayed. The Main House and Spring House (which I photographed for my previous post) are to the right.

I was pleased to see a deer on the hillside to the left of the parking lot. About the time I took this picture, someone drove by with coon dogs in their pickup truck. Their baying startled the deer.

Then I noticed a nice buck on the hillside just beyond the doe.

I walked toward the road to get a photograph of their sign.

This was the only flower on a bush just outside our room. I think it is a hibiscus. (A friend tells me that it is a hollyhock. I agree.)

As I was enjoying the morning, I noticed two ladies walking toward our room. One was carrying a large white bag, the other had two cups of coffee. We asked to have our breakfast delivered at 7 AM, and were expecting a continental breakfast – but nothing like this: scrambled eggs, yogurt, fruit, herb bread, muffins (blueberry & cornbread), orange juice and coffee. Due to COVID they do not serve breakfast in the main house, but deliver it to your room.

We ate the eggs and enjoyed some coffee (there was also a Keurig in our room) before leaving, then put the other items back in the bag and enjoyed eating something about every two hours. We didn’t empty the bag until after lunch. That was great for our food budget for the day. 🙂

We wanted to be on the road by 7:30 so we would have plenty of time to go back to Mingo where I left a bag behind in our first motel. It was a pretty, misty morning as we wound our way around and up and down the West Virginia roads to Marlinton.

Marlinton – with their pretty hanging flowers – looked pretty in the morning light.

After getting my bag at BrazenHead Inn – we moved on toward our destination for the morning – New River Gorge Bridge

We noticed several railroad bridges – something we don’t see very often in Pennsylvania.

Someone beautified the median in this area of the road.

This is the view we were enjoying when I called in to hear the sermon from our church. We rarely had cell phone service in the mountains, especially the past two days as we were traveling in the Green Bank area, location of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory – the world’s largest radio telescope. There is a 13,000-square mile area known as the National Radio Quiet Zone – meaning there is no cell phone service. We noticed a signal a few times when we were going through a town.

We were able to hear the last ten minutes of Dustan Martin’s sermon. I wrote these notes in my travel diary as Dustan closed his message by highlighting several points.

God’s Word is Powerful.

We can rest in Him.

We can come boldly to Him.

Cerwin enjoyed being back on an interstate as we approached New River Gorge Bridge, near Fayetteville, WV.

After arriving at the visitors center (11:30 AM), we walked down 176 steps to the observation deck.

New River Gorge Bridge is the second highest bridge east of the Mississippi River.

In October, Bridge Day, people willingly jump off the bridge for fun. Yikes!

Many people were taking selfies on the right front corner of the observation deck – with the bridge behind them. When I noticed a couple posing for a selfie, I asked if they would like me to take their picture. They were quite happy about that. Then I asked them to return the favor. 🙂

This is what the gorge looked like to our left.

Then it was time to go up the 176 steps. We took our time after learning our lesson at Black Water Falls where there were 200 steps. We tried going up those steps too fast. By being wise, these 176 steps seemed fairly easy.

Our Sunday morning drive from Motel 2 (bottom right), going by Motel 1 to retrieve my bag, then to New River Gorge (center bottom). The other lines mark Day 1 and Day 2. 🙂

I will tell you about our afternoon and evening in tomorrow’s post. Hint: We took a riverboat ride and visited an island.