My West Virginia outdoor door adventure allowed me to experience so many new things from Summersville Lake, Fern Creek Trail, and rock climbing! The girls and I woke up bright and early to prepare for what was to be quite an epic adventure ahead of us.

Ginny's husband, Adam, drove from Kentucky to meet us that morning and agreed to be our belay master. I was blessed to be with some of the greatest rock climbers I've ever seen, so I felt safe going into my first time scaling the side of a mountain.

West Virginia is known for its many vaults, cracks, and scales. Our troupe headed to Bubba City - a place that had routes easy enough for beginners and those that were made for the experts, like Adam and Haley's sister, Erin.

We started our morning trekking through a field of power lines until we saw a small sign that said "Bubba City approach." We made a sharp left and into the woods we went. We finally arrived among the rocks and began setting up the equipment.

Ginny, Adam, Erin, Haley, and Brooke were amazing coaches to Danny and I - the first timers. While we didn't conquer the cruxes, we still scaled over 40 feet high! Just as we were about to watch Erin and Adam scale the last route, a monster rain storm and valley sweep hit the New River gorge. When the rain started pelting the side of the mountain, we looked up to see Erin dangling from the rope. Thank goodness she is the expert and knew how to keep herself up there safely.

Since she was "cleaning the route" (taking down the course), she couldn't come down quickly. We watched as she slowly unclipped each carabiner on her way back to safe ground. Luckily, she made it down ok and immediately let us know that swaying side to side on a mountain is EPIC! Ha!

All that climbing made us hungry, so we headed to Fayetteville's famed Pies and Pints for some great brews and awesome pies!