You, Me, and the Dog: Stories From the Mobile Mojo Dojo Casa House: Week 1 – Stafford, VA and Pocahontas, WV -- Part 4

Swingin' in the rain at Droop Mountain

When I was a kid I loved the ad for Tootsie Pops with the owl. He determined that it only took three licks to reach the Tootsie Roll center. It likewise only took us about three days to feel at home at Beaver Creek. We also stopped trying to cram so much into single days.

We hiked through the Fred E. Brooks Arboretum one afternoon after morning rain. It was listed as an easy four and half mile pizza shaped loop with optional trails cutting it into four pieces. We opted to take the center trail along a small stream through dense vegetation reminiscent of the old show, “Tour of Duty”. It was steamy-wet and buggy, with ferns and saplings and flowering shrubs so dense as to induce claustrophobia. There was much fording using river stones and we saw a pile of scat we thought might be bear. Axel loved it. The trail, not the scat.

At the intersection of the two cross trails, we found a rock and log shelter that was mossy and dark, seemed to be almost melting into the jungle. I mean temperate rainforest. We took the turning and hiked up to the ridge. Thick vegetation gave way to towering hardwoods and knee-high brambles as the trail cut back and forth, climbing steadily out of the humidity past rotting deadfalls and broken rock formations. The trail back to the parking lot ran along the ridge with a soft breeze and once again the forest changed, opening up into the sort of mature woods I grew up in, with a high, leafy deciduous canopy, a few more evergreens, and the first birch we saw. There was a rotten log along the trail recently disturbed by something looking for grubs. We looked for cubs but saw only squirrels, chipmunks, birds, and deer.

Another day we drove out to Beartown State Park – Renee’s favorite part of our time in WV. It was a maze of boulders, broken cliffs, crevices, cravises :), crags, caves, and overhangs. It was every cool rock thing you’ve ever seen while out in the woods all put together into the greatest place ever. We walked under trees – not just the branches, the entire root structure. Moss and lichen, flowers, massive bird nests, signs warning not to stray off the boardwalk. Boards missing from the boardwalk. Every step there was something different. We highly recommend it unless you are the sort of person who thinks one rock is pretty much just like all the others.

We did finally make it out to the cranberry bog and it was a neat place. The climate really was colder – the Mountain Laurel that was losing its blossoms everywhere else was just coming into bloom there. It was a swampy, vibrant, decaying destination for the mountain’s flotsam and jetsam with fish and butterflies and reindeer moss.

There was a visitor’s center for the bog where we encountered a copperhead and two timber rattlers. The rattlers were bigger than I expected and I’m glad we didn’t see them on the first day. There was a great interactive display for wildlife tracks and a scat identification board. What we had seen in the arboretum wasn’t bear, it was cougar.

On Friday we had sunshine all day and drove up to the Greenbrier River Trail access point in Cloverlick for some bike riding. It was another narrow back road up and over a mountain that felt more like somebody’s driveway than anything else. We parked by the old railroad depot, got the bikes unloaded under the watchful eye of a local sitting on his porch, and began our first Rails to Trails experience. For context, I’ve wanted to ride one of these trails since I was 15 and found out about the organization. I even had a RtT sticker on my Nashbar touring bike.

Our destination was Sharp’s tunnel, a 500 yard hole through the mountain about 6 miles away (it was twice that from Marlinton, thus the Cloverlick drive). It was a wide, nearly level crushed stone trail along the river, peaceful and green and bright. A bit over a mile in, I had to stop because there was a big stone or some mud or something stuck in my rear tire. Turns out the tire had failed and I had a giant bubble. We rode back, loaded up the bikes, and headed to the Greenbrier Bikes shop in Marlinton.

Great shop, amazing people, and in no time… flat… we were back in business with a recommendation for coffee at the Rivertown Cafe. Over “cherry cordial” coffees we decided to replace the tire on the other bike too. Back to the shop, some more quick work and a fine truing job as well as shaking our heads at the cost of electric bikes, got us on the bikes for an… abridged… ride on the same trail starting in Marlinton but headed across the old rail bridge instead of up toward the tunnel.

We went back into town for dinner at the Rivertown Cafe because the special was gluten free bacon and potato pizza and local artist Chicory Roots, a trio of fiddles, guitars, and mandolins, was playing. Food was good, show was what we expected, and then we saw a pick-up drive down main street with four St. Bernards in the back.

It was a good day. A good week. We liked living in Pocahontas county.