Dwarfed in size by nearby New River Gorge National River, Babcock State Park is often overlooked by visitors to southern West Virginia. Yet the park, most famous for its photogenic grist mill, offers several excellent hiking options. While the best lie elsewhere in the park, the short Island in the Sky Trail is easily accessible …
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Southern West Virginia’s New River Gorge National River includes dozens of waterfalls, some easier to reach than others. Among the relatively simple is Butcher Branch Falls, which, despite being less than a half-mile from the Kaymoor Top Trailhead, is rarely crowded. The moderately difficult hike drops 150 feet from the western rim of New River …
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Before the New River Gorge Bridge—the longest arch bridge in the western hemisphere—was constructed in 1977, travelers across New River Gorge in southern West Virginia were forced to descend and ascend more than 800 feet in elevation on the slow and winding Fayette Station Road. The road also serviced a pair of small mining towns, …
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Cedar Run Falls, Shenandoah National Park, April 2018 The nearly 8-mile trail up Whiteoak Canyon and down Cedar Run is easily one of the most scintillating loop hikes in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park and features a string of excellent waterfalls that is perhaps unparalleled in the state. Except for a dull connector trail between the …
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This excellent hike combines two of the finest summits in northern Virginia in a strenuous circuit with considerable elevation gain and loss. The trek up Duncan and Strickler Knobs is not for the casual hiker; it involves significant climbs and drops, including a borderline Class II/III rock scramble to the summit of Duncan and a …
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- Civil War Series - The 1862 Peninsula Campaign, intended by the Union to put a decisive end to the Civil War by capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, began with a slow start. Gen. George McClellan, despite setting out in March 1862 with the largest army the continent had ever seen, inched up the …
- Civil War Series - Malvern Hill is one of the country’s best-preserved Civil War battlefields and marked the culmination of the Seven Days’ Battles, a series of engagements outside Richmond, Virginia in June-July 1862 that ended Union Gen. George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, in the midst of a retreat to …
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- Civil War Series - Following General Robert E. Lee’s defeat the day prior at Beaver Dam Creek, the Confederate Army won a decisive but costly victory on June 27, 1862 in the Battle of Gaines’ Mill. Attempting to catch the Federal Army as it was retreating south to the James River, Lee sent the …
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- Civil War Series - The Battle of Beaver Dam Creek—also known as the Battle of Mechanicsville or Ellerson’s Mill—is widely remembered today for being General Robert E. Lee’s debut as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. With the Union Army on the doorstep of Richmond in June 1862, Lee embarked on a series …
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- Civil War Series - As Union gunboats approached Richmond, the Confederate capital, on the morning of May 15, 1862, they were greeted with a hail of heavy artillery fire from what would come to be known as Drewry’s Bluff, a Civil War fortification perched high above Virginia’s James River. Named for local property owner …
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Live and Let Hike 