Watoga State Park, WV - Day 1 — To Make Much of Time

Hiking Honey Bee Trail in Brooks Arboretum at Watoga State Park, West Virginia

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This is the first post in a series for this trip. You can view links to the other posts at the bottom of this one.

Arrival at Watoga State Park

TRAVEL FROM ROANOKE, VA TO watoga state park, WV

We arrived around 4:30pm after a 2.5 hour drive from Virginia across the mountains dividing Virginia from West Virginia. The day was pretty with blue skies and the temperature continued to drop by about ten degrees from a humid low 90s in Virginia to a tolerable light humid low 80s in West Virginia. Check-in at the Administrative Building was simple. Dustin went inside and came back out with keys and a few maps within a handful of minutes. As always, our dogs spent those minutes in a full blown panic that he was forever lost to them in spite of plentiful lived expenses indicating otherwise.

This was our second visit to Watoga State Park. We previously spent four days in the park two years ago. During that visit, we ended up doing minimal exploration within the park itself and mostly drove out to check out other surrounding hikes and spots in Pocahontas County. You can read about that trip here. This time, the goal was to explore the hiking within the park and bike more on the Greenbrier River Trail, a rail-to-trail path that is 77 miles in length.

watoga state park LOCATION AND CHECK-IN

Watoga State Park is located in eastern West Virginia in Pocahontas County, the county directly north of the more well-known Greenbrier County (home to Greenbrier Resort). The park is the largest state park in West Virginia at over 10,000 acres.

Watoga is also designated as an International Dark Sky Park, meaning it is far enough away from city lights and population centers to offer beautiful views of the night sky, away from light pollution.

Watoga is just next to a teeny town of Seebert, about 15 minutes away from the slightly larger town of Hillsboro (population 230), and about 30 minutes away from the town of Marlinton (population 1100). Because of the rural location, lack of widespread internet in the area generally, visitors should expect to have no cell phone or internet reception while in the area. Plan ahead by printing maps, researching spots you wish to visit, etc. On hikes to higher elevations, we would often get 1-2 bars of cell service and check the weather and a few other basics. Even out on the main roads, there was typically no service. Marlinton was an exception, and we had solid phone/internet service while in that town.

The administrative building is located in a central portion of the park, nearby the park’s lake. They offer check-in during their regular hours in a spot that also houses a small gift shop and sells other necessities. For visitors arriving late, they ask that you call ahead to inform them, and they’ll leave a packet and keys out. They also have a return box for check-outs outside of their regular hours.

OVERVIEW OF OUR CABIN AT watoga STATE PARK

During our first visit two years prior, we opted to stay in one of the “legacy cabins,” a cabin built by the CCC. Twenty-four cabins in the park are legacy cabins. Another 10, including 2 which are ADA accessible, are more modern “classic cabins”. While we enjoyed the older cabin, it was a bit drafty and small. This trip, we opted for a newer cabin, which is very much on par with many state cabins we have experienced elsewhere. We rented a two bedroom, one bath.

The front door opens into a small, cozy family room with a sofa and two chairs around a fireplace. Just beyond is a 4-person dining room table that is situated next to the small but functional kitchen (oven, stove, microwave, fridge, toaster). Straight ahead from the front door is the bathroom and to the left are two bedrooms, one with a queen-sized bed, the other with two twins. The winning feature of this cabin (#9) is a large front porch. There are also two grassy/mossy yards on either side, one of which has a picnic table and firepit. The porch itself has a camp-style grill, Adirondack chairs for relaxing, and a small outdoor table and chair set.

Watoga also provides a bundle of firewood for each night, so we were provided an ample supply for our five night stay, though we didn’t end up using any of it this trip. The cabin sits along the main (but quiet) road through the park and backs up to a fairly steep incline. One thing we remembered from our prior stay is that this group of cabins in Island Lick Cabin Area are at a lower part of the park and are nestled into a bit of a hollow. This means that sunrise comes a little late and sunset a little early with the mountains blocking the light. We also know that there are some amazing spots higher up to enjoy both sunset and starry nights in this park.

Moths on our cabin door when we checked in. They subsequently disappeared and left us alone.

ITINERARY PLANNING AT watoga state park

As we typically do when arriving for one of our hiking trips, we spent a short time the first evening plotting out our itinerary for the week.

We identified 6 hikes (the vast majority of hikes offered in the park) that we wanted to check out, coming in at about 28 miles in length. We selected two sections of the Greenbrier River Trail we wanted to bike, coming in at about 30 miles in length over two 15 mile segments. We then determined what we’d do each day based on the lengths and to use the biking to break up long hikes.

So, our itinerary ended up with two activities a day planned over the course of our four full days in the park. Because of a chance of thunderstorms on our final day, we made sure to prioritize our top picks earlier in the week. It turned out that the last day of our trip was rainy (off-and-on) and had some minor thunderstorms, so we ended up scratching our original itinerary and found some fun alternative activities instead: both lunch and dinner at restaurants in Marlinton, touring the Cranberry Mountain Visitor Center and enjoying a short nature walk, and hiking 1.5 miles roundtrip to Falls of Hills Creek, a 3-part waterfall.

Itinerary for Day 1 at Watoga State Park

Our first day in the park was a hiking day. We selected a 4.5 mile Brooks Arboretum hike on the Honey Bee Trail for the morning and headed higher up in the park for an afternoon loop hike on the Honeymoon Trail, 3 miles in length.

hiking honey bee trail in brooks arboretum at watoga state park

First up on our hiking list: the 4.5 mile Honey Bee Trail at Brooks Arboretum. Brooks Arboretum is an area of Watoga State Park that hosts 3 trails. The best way to think of them is a large loop trail (Honey Bee Trail) with a cross in the middle of it, each arm of the cross being a separate trail. This provides hikers with ample options to cut the trail into smaller routes. It took us about 2.5 hours to hike the 4.5 miles, which allowed for some time to stop and read placards about the trees (a feature of it being an arboretum) and catch up on some things with internet connectivity at the top of the ridge.

Because Honey Bee Trail is a loop, hikers can pick which direction to go. One option is labeled as having a “steep grade” and basically cuts the trail up to the top of a ridgeline immediately. We opted for that route. I’d always rather climb up a steep incline than down and this allowed us to get some of the more strenuous hiking out of the way early on. While it definitely felt like climbing to the top of a ridge, the elevation change wasn’t as bad as some other hikes we’ve done. Early in the trail and at the end, we walked along a creek called Two Mile Run and enjoyed the water bubbling over rocks and traversing a couple of pedestrian bridges.

The hike was nice and woodsy. There were not really views because of the extensive tree cover. This also meant we were out of the sun. Much of the area is filled with Oak and Maple trees and the very popular Mountain Laurel and Rhododendrons, some of which were still (surprisingly) in bloom in early July. For the most part, the trail was undulating up and down small hills and was a very pleasant hike. We only came across one other hiking couple during the entire time we were there so it’s not super packed if you assume that a summer holiday week with nice weather should be peak time for visitors.

hiking honeymoon trail at watoga state park

After a brief break for lunch and to walk the pups, we headed into the park’s higher elevations to hike the Honeymoon Trail, which is about 3 miles in length, a portion of which cuts through Pine Run Cabin Area and allowed us to see a number of cabins we hadn’t yet seen.

Honeymoon Trail doesn’t officially have a parking lot at a trailhead so we drove to one of the trailheads just down from the T.M. Cheek Memorial Overlook and noticed there was a pull off spot on the side of the road. There were no ‘no parking’ signs so we decided to pull off on the side of the road. There is a short jaunt downhill to meet up with the Honeymoon Trail. At the intersection, we took a right.

This trail starts at a higher elevation, drops down to an area with some cabins, traces along a creek, and then heads back uphill for a fairly steep but short duration, though the total elevation change is about 400 feet. This hike had many more pine trees than our morning hike and they were intermingled with blueberry bushes and more Mountain Laurel and Rhododendrons. In general the trail was fairly narrow and in spots, overgrown a little. During both hikes we climbed over a handful of downed trees that made us suspect that the trail maintenance may be a tad laidback. (Over the course of the rest of our trip, that suspicion would be confirmed, though it didn’t impede our enjoyment.)