Blackwater Falls has such a rich history with my family. My grandmother and grandfather went there for their honeymoon
and they have been taking my family ever since. Blackwater Falls was always an escape for me because it is such a different
place compared to where I grew up. Blackwater Falls is in West
Virginia and it is like going into a time machine back to the 90s.
When I went there, the town was so different from the towns I was used to and they felt so much older. But I loved that about
it, it was a place where you could truly disconnect from the rest of the world.

 

The main attraction of Blackwater Falls was the waterfall, but I loved it for so many more things, too. There was a lodge where
my brother, my cousin, and I would go up and play arcade games
and ping pong. There was a pool that you could swim in year-round and there was a restaurant where I had fish and chips for
the first time just because it's what my grandmother got. In the
morning, I would wake up to my grandfather cooking waffles and the smell of my grandmother's coffee. After breakfast, my grandmother would tell me what she wanted to do that day and ask if anyone else wanted to do anything. Usually, we went
on hikes and rode our bikes around. At night, the whole family would gather in one cabin for dinner and games. We would always play card games and I remember I usually wasn't allowed
to play because the game was too hard for me to understand. But I would get to participate when we played things like Go Fish and Uno. Then we would sit outside, have marshmallows, and talk while listening to the sounds of the forests.

 

This is one of my favorite places and I hope that I get to let my kids experience the same things I did. I want them to ride bikes
around the park, watch the squirrels, go hiking, see black bears,
and eat marshmallows just like I did when I was growing up.