For years, my husband has been chomping at the bit to get a chance to participate in the rappelling activities at Bridge Day in West Virginia. Unfortunately, things always happen. Even in the face of a possible layoff, he was determined that this is the year, so he and a group of caving buddies decided to apply. The way the whole thing works is that groups of experienced rappellers form teams and send in applications to participate in the Bridge Day events. Some sort of official group puts all the names of the teams in a hat, and they are drawn on a lottery basis. This year seems to have been Donald's year, as his team was one of the lucky draws!
On Tuesday, October 13th, we headed out to make a visit to Donald's parents' for a couple of days. The visit was a lot of fun. They always welcome us with open arms, and the air is never lacking in chatter. Our children love visiting, as well, because they have a whole different house to run around in, and their grandparents will get down and play with them.
By Thursday, we were back on the road, headed out for West Virginia! I know I've been on that route before, but man, the mountains of WV are so much more grand that those in TN. Talk about steep, tall and majestic! Yeah, sure, I haven't seen the west coast, but I'll take this for now. Anyhow, it was a beautiful ride the entire way up.
The set up was quite nice. We had a tarp that completely covered our tent, and tarps that connected off of our newly bought canopy. Other than the children playing in the puddles collecting on the tarps behind the structures, as any normal children would do in the freezing-cold rain, we were pretty dry. Ahh!
The Bridge Day events were scheduled for Saturday, the 17th. That's when they open the bridge for pedestrian traffic on one complete side of the bridge. It is the only day out the year that pedestrians are allowed on the bridge. Neat, huh? The day before, on Friday, was a leisure, meet and greet day. Donald had an orientation to attend in the evening, but during the day, we were able to travel around the area and get a feel for the monstrosity of the bridge we were getting ready to celebrate. Since this was our first year, we did not attend any of the parties or main attraction events the townsfolk were holding. Instead, we went for the "drive and get lost" tourism (my favorite kind!). Considering there are few roads weaving through the valleys in that area, getting lost was really not an option, but it was still fun!
Bridge Day arrived. It was c-o-l-d! This will be my only complaint of the entire weekend: if it had only been a couple of degrees colder so the kiddos could have seen snow... The town had all sorts of transportation options for attendees. However, the fare was way more than my cheap self was willing to pay, sooooo, we were going to walk! Donald's fees he paid for getting to rappel included transportation, so he was good. Our camp was only a matter of a few miles to get to the bridge, and my children always seem to have endless amounts of energy, so it seemed a fine idea for a stroll in the mountains. Of course, I also knew that chivalry still exists, and most of the fine men attending the event would pick up a woman and her little children walking on the side of a road in the cold rain. I was banking on that, and I was right! A nice man, carrying an almost full load of another family stopped and picked us up. Woo Hoo!
Did I mention that the bridge was a monster? Oh yeah, I did. Well, the nice driver dropped us off about a 1/2 mile from the start of the bridge. What the town does, is have all the vendors line up on the road for a mile or so before the bridge (on both ends), and then the bridge is open on one side for foot traffic and BASE jumpers. The kiddos and I had a nice, cold, windy stroll along the vendors' row. We even bought a greasy funnel cake to start off. [NOTE: Do not accept a funnel cake already made and ready to go. Have them make it fresh, or you'll pay dearly. Keep reading, and you'll see what I mean.] After my dear daughter ate half of the funnel cake, I decided to throw it out for a couple of reasons: my hand was freezing from having to stick out while holding the plate, and it was nasty, greasy.
We eventually made our way to the start of the bridge and noticed guys in rappelling gear going under the bridge. This got me sort of excited thinking of the possibility of seeing Donald, especially for the kiddos. It then dawned on me the possibility that he could be going to the opposite end of the bridge to get underneath. Hmm... We hung out for a while, watching the guys climb down under the bridge. For this is where they rappel from, along a catwalk, w-a-y out in the center. After we didn't see Donald for quite some time, we decided that we would walk on the bridge and watch the BASE jumpers. That was pretty fun, but we realized that the further out we got on the bridge, the windier it got as well. We lasted about 15 minutes and proceeded to head off the bridge to go back to the camp. Fun.
Wouldn't you know, as we approached the end of the bridge, there was my dear husband, climbing over the fence to go under the bridge! Beautiful timing. Of course, I started to run to him so he wouldn't miss us, and proceeded to lose little man in the process. Go figure. Eamon was so busy eating Nerds that the Red Bull man gave to him, he didn't notice us walk over to Donald. Poor little guy looked so lost, and was only 10 feet away when he realized we were separated. With that drama over, we got to visit with Donald for a minute before he ran off to do his thing.
On the way back to camp, I decided that we'd try one more funnel cake (I do love them so.), and the new one was a hit. Of course, the rain that picked up as we were drudging along the road to our camp was not a hit! With a mere 1/4 mile to go, a nice ranger guy picked us up and gave us a short ride to camp. I really did not mind as the rain was starting to picking up and the children were getting fussy with all the walking, cold and rain.
Once back at camp, Sarah was starting to feel queezy and decided to lie down for a bit. More and more, her tummy was hurting, and I suddenly had that feeling that maybe a bag would be good to place by her, just in case. Well, it could not have been placed at any better moment, as she needed it immediately. Poor thing, emptied her tummy of that nasty old greasy funnel cake from earlier. Oh, we did lose some blankets from that, too. After that, she felt much better. She washed her hair from debris and then ate lunch!
The rest is not very noteworthy. On the way back home, we did get to enjoy the sight of snow on the higher mountain tops. I did not stop to let the kiddos out. I was done with the cold and precip, and I think my family members agreed; no one argued with me.
