Setting the Scene

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Welcome to my Bridge Day roadtrip blog!

The Bridge Day Festival

What is Bridge Day, you ask?
Officially, its a festival that celebrates the opening of the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
At the time it was built in the early 70s, it was the largest steel arch bridge in the world.
Its still the second-highest bridge over a river in the US.
This bridge is so significant to the state that it is featured on the back of the West Virginia state quarter.

During this festival you can do almost anything that involves a large high bridge, with the correct permits.
People rappel off it, climb it, drop to the river on a zipline, or just walk across it and admire the vertigo-enducing view.
Most noteably, people BASE jump off the bridge. This is the only day of the year that people can legally jump from a bidge this high, so permits are heavily sought after.

It doesn't end there, though.
Late October is the end of the travel season in West Virginia, and the New River Gorge is home of many outdoors adventure outfitters.
They all run specials to atract people comming in for the festival.
As a result, one can rock climb, ATV, canoe, and many other things for really cheap rates.
Most famous, though, is the white water rafting.
The New River Gorge is home of not one, but two of the best and most popular white water runs in the US: The lower New and Upper Gauley.
The New River run even ends beneath the bridge!

The foliage is pretty good too.

I love white water rafting, and outdoor adventure in general, so this festival attracted me like a bug to a camp lantern when I found out about it.

The road trip

The New River Gorge is located a long way from anywhere populated.
Getting there and back was going to take at least four days (two to fly from home to the closest airport and back, two more to drive from there to the festival and back).
Given that the travel alone was going to take 4 days, turning this into full-blown road trip was an easy decision.
After all, there are plenty of other places along the way I've never visited, and I love long drives.
The trip finally expanded into a two week roadtrip covering almost the entire Northeast: down the coast from Boston to Washington DC, then west to the Sherendoah Valley in Virginia, further west to the New River Gorge in West Virginia, north to the Land of Caanan in West Virginia, further north across western Pennsylvania, and finally east across upstate New York.
This trip has everything I love in travel, and (weather permitting) as much top-down mountain driving as I can stand. It should be quite the adventure

(LATE ADDITIO)] This was the trip where I got the idea that a year-long adventure was possible, so I'm posting it first. Looking back on it, nearly everything from my subsequent adventure was present in this two week vacation!

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