0
Cancel

    Best Tent Camping: West Virginia: Your Car-Camping Guide to Scenic Beauty, the Sounds of Nature, and an Escape from Civilization

    4.8 43

    by Johnny Molloy

    View All Available Formats & Editions >

    Paperback

    (Third Edition)

    $10.95
    $10.95
     $15.95 | Save 31%

    Temporarily Out of Stock Online

    Customer Reviews

    • ISBN-13: 9780897324953
    • Publisher: Menasha Ridge Press
    • Publication date: 08/05/2014
    • Series: Best Tent Camping Series
    • Edition description: Third Edition
    • Pages: 192
    • Sales rank: 386,126
    • Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

    Johnny Molloy is a writer and adventurer based in Johnson City, TN. He has written more than 40 books about the outdoors, including hiking guidebooks, camping guidebooks, paddling guidebooks, comprehensive guidebooks about a specific area, and true outdoor adventure books throughout the Eastern United States. Molloy writes for varied magazines and websites, and he is a columnist and feature writer for his local paper, the Johnson City Press . He continues writing and traveling extensively throughout the United States, endeavoring in a variety of outdoor pursuits.

    Read an Excerpt

    Bear Heaven

    Ratings
    Beauty: 5 stars
    Site privacy: 3 stars
    Spaciousness: 4 stars
    Quiet: 5 stars
    Security: 3 stars
    Cleanliness: 4 stars

    Address: Bear Heaven, P.O. Box 368 Parsons, WV 26287
    Operated by: U.S. Forest Service
    Information: (304) 478-3251
    Open: Year-round
    Sites: 8
    Each site has: Picnic table, fire grate, lantern post
    Assignment: first come, first served; no reservations
    Registration: Self-registration on site
    Facilities: Pump well, vault toilets
    Parking: At campsites only
    Fee: $5 per night
    Elevation: 3,600 feet
    Restrictions: Pets: On leash only. Fires: In fire grates only. Alcoholic beverages: At campsites only. Vehicles: None. Other: 14-day stay limit.

    Bear Heaven lies on a spur ridge high on Shavers Mountain outside Elkins. It can be pretty cool on summer nights. I can only imagine how cold it is in mid-January. Most tent campers will head up this way during the warmer months to enjoy a small, quiet campground tucked away on the back side of the Otter Creek Wilderness.

    The Otter Creek drainage forms the centerpiece of this preserved national forest land. Mountain ridges are the borders, where spruce stands and bogs hold strong. Lower in the wilderness are tangles of rhododendron over which grow northern hardwood species such as cherry and yellow birch. This area was once logged and many trails follow old railroad grades. In other areas, apple trees mark homesites long since abandoned. On the edge of this wilderness, Bear Heaven campground awaits your arrival.

    What does this mean for you? It means a great place to explore the heart of natural West Virginia, where the woods are king. After a day's hiking and sight-seeing, you can return to your ridgetop camp and reflect on the day's sights. (One of those sights will be what a fitting campground to be adjacent to the Otter Creek Wilderness. Another might literally be a lookout-from atop the jumbled rock outcrop near the campground picnic area where you can gaze south over a sea of wooded ridges.)

    Leave the spur road off Stuart Memorial Drive and enter Bear Heaven Recreation Area. To your right is the picnic area and rock outcrop. This spur ridge is level by mountain standards and covered in a northern hardwood forest dominated by beech and cherry trees. The canopy thickens in summer, with an understory of sugar maple and striped maple. Come winter, you can better see the numerous gray boulders strewn about the campground like childrens' toy blocks tossed around a room.

    Three sites occupy the main road. Wood log borders keep campers where they ought to be. The campsites are dispersed and large, even though this spur ridge is narrow. There are winter views into the woods below. Some less-than-level sites have tent pads.

    Entering a five-campsite loop, sites #4 and #5, the two prettiest and most used, are integrated into the boulder-dominated landscape. Swing around the loop and pass the final few campsites. This small campground has only eight units, offering the good and bad of small campgrounds: intimate, yet easily packed with campers, as well. Bear Heaven fills during mid-summer weekends and traditional summer holidays. Other than that you should have no problem getting a campsite.

    There are no trails leaving directly from the campground, other than the short walk to teh rock outcrop by the picnic area, but there is a whole wilderness just to the north. Less than a mile away, on Forest Road 303, which you passed on the way in, lies the main trailhead for the southern side of the Otter Creek Wilderness. The area's 20,000 acres of rocky ridges and rhododendron-lined creeks thrive, along with its wildlife, under wilderness protection since 1975.

    Here, you can start the upper end of the Otter Creek Trail. This 11-mile footpath is the backbone of the trail system. Several loop hikes can be made using a combination of trails. One circuit starts north down the Otter Creek Trail and turns right on the Mylius Gap Trail. Climb up to Mylius Gap, then turn right on the Shavers Mountain Trail and follow it for 4.3 miles to the Hedrick Camp Trail. Turn right here and you'll soon intersect the Otter Creek Trails for a 9.4-mile loop.

    Or start at the top of Otter Creek Trail and walk 4.4 miles down to Pothole Falls, Otter Creek's tallest fall. Then return the way you came. To stay in the high country, start at Alpena Gap near U.S. 33 and walk out along the Shavers Mountain Trail.

    Even as remote as Bear Heaven seems, the fully equipped town of Elkins is just 10 miles away, in case you need supplies or any civilized trappins. Between Elkins and Bear Heaven is the Bowden Fish Hatchery. If you have never visited a hatchery, check it out. There are fish of all sizes swimming in the tanks. It may inspire you to take a rod down to Otter Creek and toss a line for the native brook trout lying secretively in the cool pools.

    Table of Contents

    Working Table of Contents

    Allegheny Highlands
    Bear Heaven
    Bishop Knob
    Blue Bend
    Cranberry
    Day Run
    Horseshoe Run
    Island
    Kumbrabow State Forest
    Lake Sherwood
    Laurel Fork
    Pocahontas
    Seneca State Forest
    Spruce Knob Lake
    Summit Lake
    Tea Creek
    Watoga State Park

    Eastern Panhandle
    Big Bend
    Blackwater Falls State Park
    Brandywine Lake
    Camp Run
    Hawk
    Red Creek
    Seneca Shadows
    Sleepy Creek
    Trout Pond
    Wolf Gap

    Feudin' Country
    Beech Fork State Park
    Cabwaylingo State Forest
    Chief Logan State Park
    Kanawha State Forest
    Panther State Forest
    R.D. Bailey Lake

    Heart of West Virginia
    Audra State Park
    Bakers Run/Mill Creek
    Bulltown
    Cedar Creek State Park
    Coopers Rock State Forest
    Holly River State Park
    Pleasant Creek Wildlife Management Area

    New River Valley
    Army Camp
    Babcock State Park
    Bluestone State Park
    Camp Creek State Park and Forest
    Glade Creek
    Greenbrier River State Forest
    Moncove Lake State Park

    Ohio River Valley
    Lewis Wetzel
    McClintic Wildlife Management Area
    North Bend State Park
    Tomlinson Run State Park

    Appendices

    Eligible for FREE SHIPPING details

    .

    From the Allegheny Highlands to the Feudin' Country of the Hatfields and McCoys, camping in West Virginia has never been better. Best Tent Camping: West Virginia , now in its third edition, is a guidebook for tent campers who like quiet, scenic, and serene campsites. It's the perfect resource if you blanch at the thought of pitching a tent on a concrete slab, trying to sleep through the blare of another camper's boombox, or waking up to find your tent surrounded by a convoy of RVs.

    In Best Tent Camping: West Virginia , outdoor adventurer Johnny Molloy guides readers to the quietest, most beautiful, most secure, and best-managed campgrounds in the Mountain State. Painstakingly selected from hundreds of campgrounds, each campsite is rated for beauty, noise, privacy, security, spaciousness, and cleanliness.

    Each campground profile gives unbiased and thorough evaluations, taking the guess work out of finding the perfect site.

    Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

    Recently Viewed 

    Related Subjects

    Sports
    Travel
    Outdoor & Adventure Sports
    Travel - Interests, Activities & Accommodations
    United States of America - Travel
    Outdoor & Sports Activites and Interests
    U.S. Travel - General & Regional
    U.S. Travel - States
    Camping - Travel Guidebooks
    Camping Travel
    Southern U.S. - Travel
    West Virginia - Travel
    Sports
    Travel
    Outdoor & Adventure Sports
    Travel - Interests, Activities & Accommodations
    United States of America - Travel
    Outdoor & Sports Activites and Interests
    U.S. Travel - General & Regional
    U.S. Travel - States
    Camping - Travel Guidebooks
    Camping Travel
    Southern U.S. - Travel
    West Virginia - Travel
    Sign In Create an Account
    Search Engine Error - Endeca File Not Found