I had a thoroughly enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend, though not quite how I had planned on it. I've wanted to go to Seneca Rocks for quite a while, as it's supposed to have some phenomenal rock climbing. I'd looked at some pictures online, and the huge ridge of rock running down the spine of a mountain in West Virginia looks imposing and exciting. Marina finally made Dave and me put a date to it, and we decided the three-day weekend gave us a good opportunity.

As usual, my planning was pretty minimal. We chose the location and reserved a couple of campsites, but until the date was looming close we didn't do much else. We had invited the crew from our area, and the boys from DC, and it looked like we were going to have a pretty good crowd. It sounded for a while like Devin was going to come out, so I'd have a climbing partner, and I ordered some gear online to get ready.

As the date got close, though, people started to cancel — at first we didn't mind, because we were limited by our two campsites to 16 people and a fairly small tent area, but it turned out to only be four of us coming from Hampton (Derek, Dave, Jeremy and me), plus Marina from Richmond and Jared and Beth from Charlottesville. John ended up having a commitment on Saturday, so he said he'd come out on Sunday, and Devin canceled, because it turns out Seneca Rocks is all trad climbing without many good places for bouldering or top roping. In addition, my gear didn't arrive before we left, so climbing was pretty much out. On top of that, I ended up having a late meeting scheduled, so instead of leaving at 3:00 as we had planned, we ended up leaving right at 5:00 in time to catch the Memorial Day Weekend rush hour.

Dave and Derek rode together and picked up Marina, and I picked up Jeremy and headed for West Virginia. As usual I didn't fully plan, and realized I didn't have the directions to the campground. I called Dave, and it turned out we were pretty near each other on the road, so I stopped and waited for him and Jared to catch up with me at a rest stop outside of Staunton. After that we all followed Dave, and after a bit of driving in circles in Harrisonburg, we ended up making our way to 33, which would take us over the mountains and into West Virginia.

We had just snaked our way along the two-lane road over the border of West Virginia when we came to a line of stopped cars. People were already out of their vehicles, so it was pretty obvious we weren't going anywhere any time soon. We waited for a while, and had a beer while we chilled out on the road, but we were told that the line of cars was at least a mile long, and that it was a forest fire blocking the road. After talking it over and consulting the atlas, we decided to try a back road that bypassed 33 for a while. Jared lead the way with Beth navigating, and soon we were on a tiny little two-lane road going through the George Washington National Forrest. After a while, the center line disappeared, and after winding up and around some more, it suddenly turned into a dirt road. Jared stopped, and we got out of our cars. but we realized the paved road continued around a very sharp corner up the mountain, so we kept on going. The road became a true one-lane road with turnouts every mile or so, which we would have had to use if we'd met another vehicle, as there was barely enough room on the road for one car. We went up and up some more, and suddenly the road ended in a large patch of pavement at the top of a bald peak. It was late (it was already after dark when we had turned around on 33), and the view was breathtaking (looking out in all directions over the GW National Forrest), so we decided to camp there for the night. There was a patch of grass and a fire ring, so we broke out the chairs and food, and Jeremy and I took a ride back down the road a ways and filled the trunk of the corolla with firewood, and we had a nice fire going in no time. Marina had made kabobs, so we roasted them and had a scrumptious camp dinner, and drank plenty of beer as we contemplated our good fortune. After a while a pair of locals showed up, who informed us that we were on Reddish Knob, the second-highest point in Virginia. We finished eating, chatting and drinking, and set up our tents and crashed out for the night.

When I woke up the next morning, the first thing everyone said to me was they couldn't believe I'd slept through all the excitement during the night. Apparently a group of local 20 year olds had come up around five in the morning and played their stereo at ground-shaking levels, hootin' and hollerin' and purposefully waking everyone up. Apparently no one got out of their tents to talk to them, but it kept everyone but me awake for quite a while — everyone could tell that I was asleep, though, because my snoring could be heard every time their music died down a bit.

We made breakfast, where Jared and Beth introduced us to 'biscuits on a stick', where Pillsbury instant biscuits are wrapped around a dowel and roasted over the fire. The hole that is made fits a sausage perfectly, and makes a breakfast far above the level of normal camp fare. After breakfasting and admiring the view for a while, Jeremy and I set out for a hike down a path we'd notices while gathering firewood the night before. It lead down the mountain a ways, and across a rock slide where we came across a downed power line and a large rattle snake. We went down far enough to find a branch in the trail where a sign showed that the two options just lead to different roads, presumably offering hiking access up to Reddish Knob. We hiked back up, and everyone was getting ready to leave. We broke camp, and after consulting a more detailed topographical map brought by a couple of early-morning explorers we encountered, decided to backtrack and try 33 again.

On the way down the mountain we met a group of thirty or more cyclists getting ready to go down the path Jeremy and I had hiked — I don't know if the rock slide was new or not, but I don't think it was going to be an easy ride for them. When we got back to the place where we had been stopped the night before on 33, we only found a small burned patch on the road — probably just a car fire, not a forest fire. Oh well, it gave us the opportunity to see Reddish Knob. We stopped in the town outside of Seneca Rocks and got a burger and supplies at a fast food restaurant / gas station, and a few more things at the local grocery store, and went on to the campground.

The campground was certainly nice, but of course a bit anti-climactic after Reddish Knob. The sites were located around the perimeter of a large field, with the center unmowed and filled with waist-deep grasses and plants. Each campsite had a picnic table and a 12'x13' tent pad, which was for some reason filled with compressed gravel. It was certainly level, and probably wasn't going to flood no matter how much it rained, but it was a bit hard to sleep on.

They were selling firewood, and there was some debate on whether or not to buy some, but I staunchly refused to pay for firewood, and over the course of the weekend trampled quite a path through the woods and thorn bushes to haul up logs. By the time we left it had become quite a long path, as I was trying to find logs large enough to burn for a while but which were dry enough to be broken down to fit in the fire ring without an ax, which we had forgotten.

The first afternoon we just hung around the campsite, ate and drank way too much, and went for a swim at a nearby stream (the swim mostly consisted of trying to wade across the fairly swift stream on the quite slick rocks, and falling in several times). We played some frisbee and told stories, and all and all had a nice relaxed day. At some point in the evening I realized I hadn't given John full directions, and none of us had cell phone service, so I went out to use a payphone. After unsuccessfully trying to use the one in the campground, I went to a nearby convenience store, where I had to come up with $2.25 in change to get three minutes of time to talk to John. I managed to get him, though, and he said he'd be out the next day.

After getting the fire started and cooking breakfast the next morning, I got everyone moving for the hike to Seneca Rocks as fast as I could so we could get back by the time John arrived. We had found the path to the rocks the day before while looking for a place to go swimming, and the sign said it was only 1.5 miles to the rocks. I wasn't sure where exactly the path lead, but I wanted to hike it no matter what. Derek came along, and the hike was a bit hard for him, but we all made it to the top, where there was a viewing platform. The view was nice, but I couldn't see the rocks anywhere. I was getting a bit disappointed, when I realized that the path kept going up the mountain. It turned out that we were at the top of the rocks, and we were able to climb out on them and get spectacular views of the area, the rocks, and the climbers climbing up some of the spires not accessible by hiking.

After coming back down everyone wanted to go swimming, but Jared and Beth hadn't brought their swimming clothes, so I rode back with them to the campsite to make sure John hadn't arrived yet, and then we went back and got another swim in. By the time we went back to the campsite John was just arriving, so we hung out with him, played some more frisbee, and ate and drank some more (it was quite a weekend of binging). Everyone was pretty tired, though, so it wasn't a very late night.

The next morning we made another breakfast of fire-roasted biscuits and egg-hotdog-potato mixture, and slowly broke camp. Jeremy and I wanted to see Seneca Caverns, which we had passed signs for on the way out, but everyone else had to get back home. We decided to go anyway, and got to climb around in a nice little cave, and see the 'stratosphere stalagmite', and a frozen hibernating bat.

All in all I guess we didn't do all that much, but it was a really enjoyable trip. Not too hectic (really the antithesis of hectic), fun, and with a tidbit of adventure. I'm going to have to bug Marina and Beth for a copy of the pictures they took — it was definitely a weekend I want to remember.