We specifically wanted West Virginia because it is home to the darkest skies east of the Mississippi, which is supposed to result in excellent stargazing. We were interested in seeing what the skies looked like with as little light pollution as possible and also getting some hiking in. We found a trail with an easy two-day length (16.5 mi) near Spruce Knob, the center of the dark sky zone. We did some driving and stayed in a hotel the night before the hike so we were sure not to have any difficulty doing the miles we needed to get to the desired campsite.
Arriving at Spruce Knob, it sure looked like the weather reports had been fibbing and we were walking into a storm of some sort, with dark and fast-moving clouds all around. We hung around a little to see if it was just about to start but nothing changed so we set off anyway.
We were aiming for one of the campsites along the creek at the bottom of the valley, which were supposed to be pretty nice. The whole area was pretty nice actually. Saw our first other person on a hike right at the end, where he was fly fishing for trout in the creek. He reported they were going after the lure but he wasn't any good at hooking or netting them. We saw many fish, so I think he was getting plenty of practice.
The trail crossed the stream several times, which was nice on feet at the end of a day of hiking. Ana found a designated campsite that had seen so little use that the tent site was covered in fluffy grass, which was pretty amazing. It also had great trees for convenient bag-hanging, easy access to water, stone chairs to sit in and more flat stones for food prep. 10/10
Picture from the next morning
We went to sleep fairly early but set an alarm for later at night to look at the sky. When the alarm went off the skies were clear and we could get a good look - but I have to report that it was not notably more spectacular than looking skyward from home on a mountain in New Hampshire. We'll have to step it up to the darkest place in the continental US in Texas at some point, or do something really spectacular like Gates of the Arctic I guess.
We took it easy getting up and going in the morning since our mileage target was very achievable and we were not under any time pressure. I picked up a really disgusting heavy bag of trash in another meadow that had obviously been left by one of the university groups that had also camped in the area - I usually wouldn't want to cart something that heavy out, at least not if 'out' was far off but with only 6 miles or so to go I sucked it up. At the last stream crossing (the only one with a bridge) we ran into an older couple who asked us how we could possibly fit everything we needed into such small and light packs so we stopped and had a substantial conversation about the costs and benefits of our equipment choices and recommended a few websites for them to peruse later.
We posed with the sign after hiking back up the mountain. The view from the tower was also very nice and the weather while breezy was pleasant.
On our way out, we stopped at a family diner at the base of the mountain (Gateway Diner, if you're in the area) where Ana ordered the fried local trout (apparently didn't get enough in Japan). Trout can be hit or miss, especially at a diner, but apparently the mountains of West Virginia is the place. Very fresh and crispy and overall worth mentioning. Darn cheap, too. We drove up north for a while through some very pretty country before finding a hotel in Morgantown for the night.
We had the whole next day to get to our hotel in Columbus and the drive wasn't that long, so we had a huge leisurely breakfast then stopped at a local winery / distillery named Forks of Cheat (which is apparently the local river or something) near Morgantown on the way. I had kind of expected it to be new and cheesy but they've been there for quite a while and had some impressive products, which, since we weren't flying, we could purchase in some quantity and drive home ourselves.
From there we continued on to Columbus where we were staying at a pretty fancy hotel downtown that was attached to the convention center hosting the workshop and conference. We had the evening free before the 8 am workshop start so we found a combination bar/movie theater (Studio 35) showing Wonder Woman. It was outstanding. We'd tried to see the movie the previous week and found only sold-out shows locally, even on the third weekend of release and hours before showtime. Seeing it with a not-notably-overpriced pizza and beer with only adults in the movie theater was great - hope more theaters like this open near us.
After that we had two days of workshop and two days of professional conference. We've been in the field long enough that we know a lot of people and constantly run into them at events like these, which made it probably the most fun conference of this type we've been to yet. The workshop was the Advanced tier of the National Effective Teaching Institute, which focused on best practices and implementation strategies for a lot of the techniques we use already, but there were some interesting twists and sound advice to take things further. The conference was the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition and that was a nice mix of catching up with colleagues, a bit of networking, seeing research presentations, and making research presentations. It also turned out that the food in downtown Columbus is pretty amazing in some cases - we recommend Wolf's Ridge Brewing, which we thought was a standard gastro-pub but was considerably higher quality than that, pushing potentially into our top ten dinners out of all time though we only split some appetizers and a dessert.
Left to right: chive gnocchi (the best $10 I've spent in years), steak tartare, and scallops crudo. I think the scallops were the most impressive - multiple flavors and textures melted together in the mouth. Bonus: work paid for the food (but definitely not the booze)!
Back in NC now teaching a summer class. Living the dream!
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