This is part four of a travel series to West Virginia. To start at the beginning, go HERE!
After spending the morning in Blackwater Falls State Park we drove 45 minutes to our next stop for the night: Seneca Rocks.
Seneca Rocks is a 900 foot Tuscarora quartzite crag in Pendleton County, West Virginia. It is located within the Spruce-Knob Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area and it offers world-class traditional climbing, scenic trails, and rich history in the Monongahela National Forest. There is a visitor center, but it wasn't open yet for the season when we were there...which I thought was ridiculous 😡. In fact, the road into the Seneca Rocks area was actually CLOSED! Thankfully, you can still easily access the trail by walking in. We were also disappointed that the Dolly Sods Wilderness area (another must-see West Virginia attraction) was closed in April. Apparently, they close the roads in winter in West Virginia for safety reasons and don't re-open them till around mid-April and we were there about a week too early 😢.
We have stayed in a lot of different hotels/motels before but this was the first time we rented a room above a store! There aren't many places to stay around Seneca Rocks, so it was either this or camping. Yokum's is actually a campground offering tent camping, RV camping, even tee pee camping, but they also have a few rooms above their general store and restaurant to rent too, so that's what we did. The room, though dated, was actually not so bad. It was spacious, and had a little kitchette, tv, internet, everything you'd expect in a motel room (sorry, I never took a photo).
The building on the right is a separate business and is West Virginia's Oldest Store built in 1902. There is a restaurant inside, but it wasn't open for the season yet. Thankfully, Yokum's serves food all year round, or we would have starved.
We did go inside Harper's Old County Store but I didn't take any photos 😢. The employee said everything in the building was original. It was pretty cool!
The main reason we stayed here, was because it was located directly across the street from Seneca Rocks. In fact, we could see the amazing rock formation from our hotel window. What a view!
Because the park was closed, after checking into our hotel, we just walked across the street to the trail head. First we came to this pretty bridge.
The bridge had pretty views of Seneca Creek.
The first part of the trail at the base of the trail is fairly level and is filled with all these rocks that must have fallen over the years. It was really cool seeing so many rocks amongst the trees, I've never seen that before.
But eventually all good things must come to an end and the uphill climb began 😁. The Seneca Rocks Trail is 1.3 miles each way with a 960 elevation deck that leads to an observation deck with panoramic views of the North Fork River Valley.
Even though there is no foliage hiking this time of year, there are advantages to that: you can see through the trees! Normally foliage would block scenic views like this.
We could even see the top of Seneca Rocks through the trees, which would normally be covered up tree foliage.
Unlike the Maryland Heights Trail at Harpers Ferry, the Seneca Rocks Trail had switchbacks, so climbing uphill wasn't that bad. There were so many signs about staying on the trail and not climbing up the hill to skip the switchbacks. Why anyone would put themselves through that misery, I have no idea, but apparently a lot of people think it's a better shortcut.
After almost an hour of climbing up, we finally got a glimpse of the observation deck...so we knew we were almost there 😃!
And the views of the North Fork River Valley were definitely worth the hike!
You can climb higher than the observation deck if you dare. My husband and son went further on, I chose to wait (and pray) for their return on a bench on the observation deck.
As always, the hike back down was easier than the hike up. At the base of Seneca Rocks is an old homestead. It was closed while we were there, but we walked around the property and peeked through the windows.
Of course, I'd have to put in modern plumbing before moving in 😆.
They had a garden. I like how they sectioned everything off with rocks and had walking paths in-between.
We only had one choice for dinner and that was Yokums. They do make good burgers. I saw a lot of people ordering pizza too.
Well, by now we were tired after a full day of hiking. It was nice to be able to just walk upstairs after dinner and go to bed. The silhouette of Seneca Rocks was absolutely breathtaking.
Have A Great Day! Amy
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For more posts from this travel series check these out:
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