...are a part of #Westylife.
Sometimes, they lead to being stranded in a big city, or sometimes, at a trail head in the middle of nowhere. This time, we luckily broke down in one of the best adventure towns in America!
Fayetteville, West Virginia is a town on the radar for many reasons. BASE jumpers know it for “Bridge Day”, when the iconic route 19 bridge is open for jumping off into the New River Gorge. That same gorge is also world famous for its amazing and beautiful whitewater rafting trips.
...how about a hike or bike on some of the areas famous trails? The bike trails are fast and flowy and the hiking trails offer 100 mile views of the rolling, green mountains of West Virginia.
....rather - on top of the canyon, the bottom... or anywhere else in-between!
And that is just be beginning;-)
If you are willing to drive for 20 minutes (which we will once we get the van fixed), an entire new world of adventure opens up in Summersville. This town will ring a bell to any whitewater kayakers as it's the home to the Gauley River, and the worlds largest whitewater kayaking festival. The Gauley offers some of the best river waves for surfing south of our home river, The Mighty Ottawa.
Now, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t already know all this adventure existed here;-) The fact is, I have actually been down to Fayetteville many times as a whitewater kayaker, visiting during Gauley Fest, but only spent my time paddling the iconic Gauley River so, seeing more of this amazing area made breaking down one of the best things that could have happened!
Being here, away from Gauley Fest and my kayaking buddies, made me realize just how special this place is. In fact, we would consider it to be one of the best adventure towns in the east!
The adventures I have talked about above barely scratch the surface of things to do here. As an example, our good friends Brad and Wendy took us paddling boarding on the amazing Summersville Lake, where we saw endless climbers deep-water free-solo climbing, along with many others just relaxing around massive rock faces.
But, while we were told these parts were stocked full of hungry fish ready to bite, we weren’t able to find them. Lucky fish!
....that is maybe just the best part of adventure. You don’t remember the times where everything went as planned. You remember the times you broke down, the times you fished so late (because you hadn’t caught anything), and the times you couldn’t find your truck because it was so dark, until you paddled almost into it.
So as bummed as we could have been about the van breaking down and the fish not biting.... there's no way we ever could be.
Because, adventure is where you are. And, we found ourselves in the kind of adventure paradise we could easily call home.
And with that, it’s time to get outside and make the most of this welcome breakdown;-)
http://adventure.kavu.com/searching-for-sero
http://www.searchingforsero.com/sero-stories/
John Rathwell
Tracy Guenard
© 2026 KAVU
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