New River Gorge with the Roomie and our families

I have been so lucky this summer to have seen three of my former roommates. First Destiny, then Katrina, and now Brittney. With Destiny, we lived fairly close to each other (before she moved) so it was easy to take a short drive up or down. Katrina's parents still live near my parents, so when she's in town, it's also a quick drive over to Charlottesville. Betsy lives near Dan's parents, so whenever we head to Washington, I try to see her, too. Brittney lives in Ohio. For the foreseeable future, I won't have any relatives in Ohio. But I hadn't seen Brittney since I went to her wedding six years ago. That is too long to go without seeing her! She and I decided that needed to change. I looked at a map to find what was smack dab between us. Beckley, West Virginia. Close to the New River Gorge National Park. Bam. We hatched our plan.

Both of our husbands (who had never met) agreed to take a Friday off so that we could play Friday and Saturday. We drove out Friday morning, stopped for lunch, and met at one of the visitor's centers in the park. I had to restrain myself from doing a cheesy slow-mo run into a big hug when I saw her. We caught up a little bit while the kids stretched their legs and watched a video about pollution and how we are killing the planet. We stopped briefly at a waterfall overlook (Sandstone Falls), then drove on to another visitor's center with a beautiful view (Horseshoe Bend) and a park for the kids.

I deeply regret not using my phone's panorama setting to take a picture. Britt's husband did and it was an awesome picture!

 The weather was perfect.

I think Britt has a picture of all of us together. I'll have to get that from her.

After playing at the park and seeing the view. we took a little hike (once we actually found the trailhead) with the strollers, which started out well and then got worse as the terrain got more rocky...
Then we found another playground which was shady and secluded so we stayed there until it was dinnertime.

I had previously looked on tripadvisor and urbanspoon for restaurant recommendations in the town where we were staying, Oak Hill. We chose to go to what was supposedly the best of the town's 26 options, Los Vaqueros. Not the greatest, but I guess I shouldn't have expected much. The company, however, didn't disappoint!

After dinner we headed to our hotel. Brittney's girls (cute little Lucy and Claire) were pretty pooped so they went to bed while Dan and I took our three for a swim.

The next morning, Dan arranged to go rock climbing with a local company. The park has something like 1,600 different climbing routes and is one of the best outdoor areas to climb within driving distance of us, so it was a great place for Dan to go. I dropped him off bright and early and then we met up with the Martins at Canyon Rim Visitor's Center to check out the awesome bridge. Sam liked to read all the signs and then regale us with the various facts. Fact 1: You can fit one Washington Monument and two Statues of Liberty (without the base) on top of each other under the bridge. (And have 20 feet to spare.) Fact 2: It is the largest single-arch bridge in the Western hemisphere. Fact 3: It is made of a steel which rusts on the outside, but not on the inside.

It was nice and early so we had the whole overlook to ourselves.

We decided to do another hike, Endless Wall hike, I think. This one was about two miles and had a nice overlook which was straight down and pretty nerve wracking for us moms with little kids. We didn't get too close to the edge.

Lucy, Afton, Claire, Sam.

I can't stress enough how perfect the weather was! Oh, it was so nice. And this trail was well shaded which was perfect.

We met back up with Dan who told us all about his climbing adventure while we ate PB&J's and watched the kids sword fight with sticks.

 I was jealous that Lucy lets Brittney do her hair in all these cute ways... Afton usually just wants her hair down.

We grabbed some ice cream nearby and hung out a little bit longer before saying goodbye.

 Love that girl!

Oh, it was so great to see her! And it meant so much to me that Ryan would take the time off and that they would bring their girls and everything. It was just great. We won't let another six years go by again!

After saying goodbye, our family went back to the bridge view, since Dan hadn't seen it yet.

 It was much more crowded this time...

On our way out, we also found a crazy little road that got you down the gorge for another cool view of the bridge.

Not quite sure what's going on in the next picture down. They look so forlorn.

We piled back in the car and headed back home.