Take me home, country roads

Yes there are lots of country roads in West Virginia, lots of mountains too and the drive from Friendsville, Maryland (yes Friendsville is the name of the place, and no the I don't believe the care bears or any other cartoon characters live there, not that I saw anyway) to Summersville, West Virginia was pretty spectacular, but that doesn't make me hate that song any less. Is it possible to visit this state without that song popping into your head? I don't think so - I'd be pretty screwed if I lived here. Rant over.

After driving from through the mountains and country roads from Maryland we joined Franks friends at a pretty sweet campground at the lake right above the put-in for the Upper Gauley. These folks knew how to camp. With crocks pots of slow roasted pork and homemade chili and a spread of other tasty treats all washed down with ice-cold Yingling.

Cool sunset that evening at the campground 

After a few beers around the campfire the guys hooked me up with some friends of theirs who were paddling the Upper Gauley the next morning (they planned on paddling the Lower Gauley the next day).

Camping by the lake above the Upper Gauley

A group of nine of us were up at 6am the next morning for a run down the Upper Gauley (American Whitewater - Upper Gauley). The group were well seasoned paddlers with three off them having nearly 100 years on the water between them. It was a great run with some fun big volume rapids. I took a bunch of photos from the river but my camera decided to delete them all :( - thanks camera!

Instead I'll steal some from American Whitewater to give you an idea of the river:

The famous Pillow Rock rapid

Iron Ring, another quality rapid on the Gauley

Most of the group headed off that evening, but I camped out for another night and paddled the river again the next day with Kelly, one of the guys from the first run who like me, finished his job and is traveling for a while.

That day we had the river entirely to ourselves which is pretty rare on the Upper Gauley. The following weekend over a thousand paddlers would descend on Summersville, for Gauleyfest, the biggest paddling festival in the world.

The second run went fine, until we were driving back from the take-out. I'm normally pretty careful about tying up boats, but this time I obviously wasn't. Driving along a dirt road, I heard a noise from the roof and then looked out the window to see one of the kayaks swinging for the car like a wrecking ball. And that was the end of the side window.

Oops!

And the resulting gear explosion to clear out the broken glass:

I know it all came out of the car, but how exactly does it all fit back in?

No worries though, as all paddlers know, duct tape fixes everything:

My new window - where would we be without duct tape?

Thanks to windscreen cover on my insurance and an impromptu stop in Charlotte, North Carolina it was all sorted the following morning and I was on my way to my next stop, Asheville, North Carolina.