West Virginia isn’t normally on people’s radar. However, with the newly designated New River Gorge National Park, West Virginia is slowly starting to get some attention. The state is surprisingly beautiful, with lush green forests dotted with red, yellow, and orange this time of year.

WV actually wasn’t part of our original Great Smoky Mountain hiking trip, but one of our friends who is coming along has an annual white water rafting trip at around the same time, and invited us to join her. I was a bit lukewarm as my last white water rafting experience 30 years ago was quite meh, but Joe was interested so we decided to go for it. It wasn’t until the day before the rafting trip when we learned that the Upper Gauley River rafting course consists of five class 5 rapids. White water rafting is categorized by five classes. Class one being the easiest and five the hardest before rapids become unnavigable. The Somerville dam release upstream around this time of year is what creates the class 5 rapids. I seriously contemplated backing out last minute, but when the head guide said, “this is not for the lily-livered chicken”, I said, “Game on!”

Everyone else was pulled back into the raft pretty quickly. I ended up floating downstream and losing my paddle (was told to chuck it so I could swim). Luckily, another raft was able to pull me into theirs. Did I panic a little when I was briefly trapped under the rafts twice (once under ours, and again when the rescue raft plowed over me)? You bet your sweet bippy I did. Did I have fun? Absolutely. Would I go white water rafting again? Probably not, because it’s still not THAT interesting to me.

• National Parks
• Travel
• West Virginia