WV Bridge Day Festival Camping Trip and Geocaching

Every year, on the 3rd weekend of October, my husband and I go up to the Bridge Day Festival. It is held in Fayetteville, WV and celebrates the Northern Hemisphere's Longest Arch Bridge. The Bridge is truly an AWESOME spectacle to behold and during October the foliage is at its peak.

Here's a photo of the bridge I took from Wikipedia - of course, on Bridge Day, it is covered with mass amounts of people, arts and crafts vendors, and LOTS of yummy unique food!

The festival is only open from 9AM - 3PM, therefore there are LOTTTSSS of people crammed into a relatively small space. Oh, and did I mention, that along with the vendors and people, this is the one day a year when you can legally parachute off of the bridge? Yes, you can also repel. Bungee jumping is no longer allowed, too many . . .accidents.

Here's some photos of us on the bridge from last year:

But we don't go to watch the death-defying acrobats. No, we go because this is our home. It's a celebration of our state and its beauty. We love this area so much we even got married here!

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I will now bore you with lots of photos of our recent Bridge Day/Camping/Geocaching Trip.

We started out Saturday by going straight to the Bridge for some lunch. We first had to brave all the traffic.

James was craving a turkey leg and roasted corn.

After our a short time on the crowded bridge, we went to pick out our camping site. We now love staying at the "Gorge Gateway Center." Lots of beautiful camping sites, clean bathhouses, and not too crowded. You can also choose between the "loud" and "quiet" camping sections. We chose the quiet section because we're old fogies now-a-days. LOL

James went to the bathhouse to freshen up, and I started a fire. I was very proud of my fire that I started by myself. I just used twigs and logs laying around the campground, and for kindling I used some scrap paper from my EPP quilting bag ;c) I knew all those subscription cards with hexagons cut out of them would come in handy one day~!

James unpacked the car, and I made our bed. The WV Mountains get very chilly at night so I brought 3 tubs full of blankets and quilts.

Here is our bed complete with the James tee-shirt quilt I made.

And Here is James the sleepy head the next morning. We were awoken by crows. . the really noisy ones!

We stopped at a gas station near the bridge for our morning coffee - pumpkin spice cappuccino and coffee. This is what I saw on the rocks near the gas station. Does anyone know the name of this quilt block?

On our way back from Bridge Day - we wanted to do a little geoaching. Geocaching is like a high-tech scavenger hunt. More info about this can be found HERE. We drove down beautiful Rt 60 from Fayetteville, to Charleston. Our first cache was GC260JM - "Coal Heritage GeoTrail #1.

This was an absolutely breathtaking hike along a trail that ran along a stream. There was a long wooden bridge, dripping cliffs, lots of waterfalls, and all the Fall colors one could imagine.

Here are some of my favorite photos from this:

Our next cache was near Hawk's Nest - which is another beautiful area with lots of overlooks and photo ops. Look what we saw here?! Another Quilt Block!

We got a few other caches on our way home. I am now VERY tired and have a busy week of quilting ahead. =cD

I am right now in the process of making a tee-shirt quilt for a customer, and I also am trying to finish another QAYG quilt pattern/tutorial. It's a fall-themed quilt so hopefully I can get that for you before the END of Fall ;c)