Heading South: Lexington, KY & New River Gorge National Park, WV

Even though we’ve been parked in NC for over a month now, our blog is still stuck in Chicago. Back in November on our way home, we stopped in Kentucky for horses and bourbon and in West Virginia to visit the country’s newest National Park.

In Lexington, we spent a week at the Kentucky Horse Park, which is an “equine theme park” owned by the state of Kentucky. They were already in their winter season which meant less was happening with the horses, but we paid cheaper fees and also had Christmas decorations in our campsite!

We spent a morning exploring the horse park’s barns and museums.

And then spent an afternoon at the Buffalo Trace distillery in nearby Frankfort. This is the only distillery I could find offering free tours/tastings and they are very popular and have to be booked months in advance.

Besides confirming that neither of us really like bourbon that much, a couple of things from the tour stand out in my mind. First, the black stain covering all the old buildings is ethanol-loving mold. Second, supposedly, the mineral-rich water from the limestone aquifer beneath Kentucky enriches the flavor of the bourbon and also strengthens the bones of the horses.

We spent the following week in Fayetteville, WV to visit New River Gorge National Park. We loved our full hookup campsite with a deck at Riftrafters Campground!

Because the National Park follows 53 miles of the New River, it is very spread out. In Fayetteville, we were near the New River Gorge Bridge, which holds the title of the longest steel arch bridge in the US. It would be nice to visit in October for the fall colors and the Bridge Festival when hundreds of BASE jumpers jump from the bridge.

We drove the Fayette Station Road down into the gorge. This was the original route across the river that took 40 minutes until the arch bridge shortened the trip to just a few seconds. We also hiked the Endless Wall trail along the rim.

We also went to Babcock State Park while visiting this area. We had planned to hike there but it was frigidly cold so we just snapped a couple of photos.

Our time in NC with family and friends is flying by this year. It’s hard to believe that in a little over a week, we’ll be back on the road heading toward the southwest.