Nailed It! [West VA] - Day 1

January 5^th, 2014

Do you see the fog?!

Our West Virginia trip began at 9am, from the Rutgers Student Center. We ate bagels, loaded our luggage into the black trucks with tinted windows, and drove Secret Service style down the highway. The weather began as icy and transitioned from cold to sunny to rainy to windy over the course of the 8 hours we drove.

We took a lunch break at Chipotle a few hours into the trip. We then continued on, eventually entering West Virginia. In-between the short hour I dozed off, I vaguely remember Nikita attempting to take a picture of the “Welcome to West VA” sign as we drove past and some subsequent “NOOOO”s when the picture didn’t work. Fortunately, we were able to take a picture at a rest stop later on.

"Wild and Wonderful" - official motto

As our big trucks descended deeper into West Virginia, the number of lights decreased to none and the amount of wooded area drastically increased. Leaving the last established town (of Oak Hills), we began truly driving within the unincorporated areas towards Beards Fork. 

The roads were narrow, eventually turning into a single lane road. The dark was oppressive, and the headlights of the car formed creepy images in the dense woods around us. The mood was heightened by mention of woodsmen and “omg what if a small child randomly came into the middle of the road???”, as well as heavy mouth breathing. Rico told a story about a man who apparently observed a huge number of woodsmen in the forest. Personally, I have been known to get startled if someone opens an apartment door when I wasn’t expecting it, so suffice to say, I was adamant about ceasing the creepy stories and noises as soon as possible.

One classroom where we slept

We did make it to the SALS building – alive!!! We got an orientation and “thumbnail sketch” of the area from John David, Director of SALS. We ended our night with Catchphrase before passing out on air mattresses in old classrooms.

Yatee