mountains Archives - Opossum Creek Retreat

One Family’s Take on A Staycation at Opossum Creek

Recent guest Clinton Curtis wrote this blog post about his recent stay at Opossum Creek with his family.

My wife and I created a ritual this year – coinciding with the Chinese New Year we would escape to a secluded location in the mountains with our two daughters to reflect on our lives and plan for the year ahead. Theoretically, we could have done this at home, but to retreat from our daily routines and familiar surroundings added energy and excitement to the process.

We rented a cabin at Opossum Creek Retreat where the stars pierce the ink black sky at night and the only distractions are the wildlife and the gurgling stream.

To some, it may seem like a lot of effort to pack and drive to an offsite location for such an event, but many fortune 500 companies send their employees great distances for such ‘offsite’ meetings because of the unencumbered creativity that ensues. For us, however, the trip from our home to the woodland sanctuary of OCR is all of seven miles!

To describe this phenomenon we’ve borrowed the term ‘staycation’ from the 1970’s book Your Money or Your Life. Our staycation has been even better than expected. We have welcomed the Year of the Dragon in fine fashion, nestled in the tree branches of the eastern woods we love so much.

Our cabin exemplified simplicity and royalty simultaneously, and dipping into the hot tub in midwinter added an element of the mystical.

Our family found a wonderful harmony at OCR and a quiet ability to fulfill our goals. As I mentioned, we have created a ritual, and we plan to return to Opossum Creek Retreat in 2013 to bring in the Year of the Snake!

The Fastest Zipline Ever (Almost)

The entrance to some family fun at the Burning Rock Outdoor Adventure Park.

Cool shirts. Plus, they put on a great soccer camp

As a rental cabin owner guy, you get certain perks. This is a post about one of them.

Burning Rock Outdoor Adventure Park had invited The Opossum Creek Retreat Adventure Team ™ (that’s us) to test drive their Brand New Dual racing Zip line.

Having been a stranger in a strange land, I know it can make you do strange things. So I asked the coaches from our kid’s soccer camp, Challenger Sports (all from England) if they would like to peg the adrenaline meter with us on a zip line and they said “Yep we’re in!” And then they immediately said, “What’s a zip line?”

Thanks to Burning Rock’s hospitality they said yea, bring on the Brits too!

The Burning Rock zipline is always safety first.

There is something really great about taking people outside their comfort zone; when you do, it’s easier for everybody to just laugh out loud at themselves and at each other. Just another great thing about living in the mountains

Burning Rock has the fastest, longest zipline east of the Rockies, and I’ll say this about it: it feels like you’re flying.

View from top of Burningrock zip line over looking camp ground ATV track ready for burning rocks 2500 foot zip line.

Personally, I think it could be longer and faster. Hey, Woody (Duba, Burning Rock GM): I know you have a spot picked out. Go bigger next time, huh? (People say my sarcasm is endearing).

What else can you say? If you like speed, and thrills, and doing things you’ve never done before, and West Virginia, then this is for you. If you don’t like that stuff, you should probably stay home. Or maybe watch it on youtube.

What’s also cool about Burning Rock is the 8000-or-so acres and 100+ miles of West Virginia ATV trails. I’m not a huge ATV guy, but I like to ride every now and then, and I think it’s going to be a blast to take my kids.

In the past, we had sent guests down to the Hatfield-McCoy Trail System, which is a pretty cool place in its own right. But it was a fairly long drive to get there, and the system down there is actually several different trail systems, all connected together. Burning Rock is more of a one stop shop. Rentals, guides, gear… everything you need.

I’m definitely looking forward to what Opossum Creek Retreat guests have to say about it. Almost as much as I’m looking forward to going back myself.

The Most Important Thing About Birding (Hint: It’s Not Birds)

The most important thing about a birding trip is not the birds. Really.

Here’s why: All kinds of things can influence the birds you see and hear. So let’s focus on stuff that really matters on a field trip: the people.

It’s like soup; too much of one ingredient is boring. I love time alone in the outdoors, to be sure, but being with a group of fellow bird nerds/naturalists when everyone gets a good look at a fun bird? And it’s a lifer for someone in the bunch? And everyone is smiling and giddy? You can’t help but be excited too.

The fun of birding in a group comes mostly from these moments. They’re contagious. People are dancing smiling laughing when they see something that’s -how can I put it- exotic for them. It’s fun to share these moments. Who you’re with is way more important than what you might see.

I’ve been on dozens of field trips under every type of circumstances, from research and banding to formal surveys and counts to paid private guided field trips. And with the most bizarre groups you can imagine. By far the best groups have beginners in them; If you go out with a bunch of really good birders it can get boring real fast. I think it’s because they all know every peep and who made it and why. There’s no give and take about what is going on around you.

Also sometimes I think they are afraid to say anything because they might (heaven forbid) make a mistake. I promise you if you are on a trip with me I will miss ID a bird at some point during the day, every day. And it’s usually something really obvious and easy like last year when I called a chirping Cardinal a Chat (this is a major bird nerd no-no). Everyone looked at me like I had lost my mind, and by that point in the week, I had.

But I’m not a hired gun. No degree. No life list (that’s another story). So maybe it’s okay for me to make mistakes. Personally I like to see the pros make a mistake once in a while it shows they are human too. Perfection is way overrated.

When you have a good field guide, and some beginners, and you mix them in with other levels of interest and experience, it’s more fun. Makes me smile just writing about it.

The most rewarding bird trips for me are when we’re giving back. You don’t have to be a great birder to be a ambassador for nature. You don’t have to be great at anything. “Showing is better than telling” a 4 year old told me, as I was talking too much to a school group I did a bird presentation for. She wanted more action.

I get really excited when out on a field trip and I see a new bird or bug or critter of some kind. Even plants. But when I see someone, young or old, really getting excited about what’s around them, maybe for the first time ever? That’s a wonderful feeling.

The New River Birding and Nature Festival sponsors hands-on learning experiences for local schools. These are the trips that give me the best feelings of all.

Share what you know, right?

How We Accidently Built The Best Cabins In The New River Gorge

Well, I never would have guessed I’d be living here in West Virginia.

Really. I was too cool (obviously!), and West Virginia is, well, ah, let’s see… how do I put this… it has some stigmas attached to it, and some of them are true.

Two decades ago, I wasn’t in the mountain cabin rental business. I was a guide. I was just stopping by West Virginia for Gauley Season, on my way to guide the Bio Bio in Chile. What happened was, see, I met this woman, and… well, that’s really another story.

But I’ll say this: after two years of showing her all the cool places someone might want to live like Chile, Costa Rica, Montana, Utah, and Arizona, she wanted to move back to the New River Gorge!

I was a carpenter/odd jobs guy to make ends meet in between raft guiding seasons. One day, there was an ad in the paper for a house and two acres for $12,000! It looked like we could fix it up and sell it, or rent it to raft guides. How can you go wrong for $12,000? Seriously!

My father-in-law, ever willing to see me work harder, gladly put up the money. Partway through the tear out (we took it down to the studs, pulled out the wiring, and gutted the plumbing too) we saw a brochure for Mill Creek Cabin rentals. I can remember thinking, if we furnish it and fix it up nice we could rent this old farm house to just about anyone!

After talking to the raft companies to see if there was any demand for those types of rentals, we decide to fix it up and rent it nightly to rafters visiting the New River. We knew right away we wanted to do more, and two years later, a house and 20 acres became available just around the corner. The land was laid out perfectly for my vision of providing a secluded little place for people to relax, surrounded by mother nature.

Now, I’m the first to admit that I was never a very good carpenter. But I was lucky to have some very good ones help me. The one who helped (?!) most was Whitey. Whitey is as close as I’ve ever seen to a “master” carpenter. He once said to another carpenter working on the job after seeing me up and down a ladder in the same spot for the better part of the day, “You know, I believe Geoff will keep %$#@ing it up until he gets it right”.

I was too much of a perfectionist, and nowhere near enough skill. Story of my life, right? Anyway, I was very happy to have Whitey, and Craig, and lots of lots of others make my ideas take shape. The first two cabins where designed on the proverbial bar napkin over a few beers, and went up with the help of great guys like them. They were ready to go at the beginning of our third year in the cabin rental biz.

That’s how things started. But I had no idea what was coming next.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

The 10 Best Reasons To Go To The Mountains For Spring Break

1. Cold at the beach blows, but cold in the mountains is pretty awesome (skiing, hiking, snuggling, etc.)

2. You don’t want to be around a bunch of drunk college kids/be a bunch of drunk college kids.

"Look, I'm just saying you should try snowboarding. Just try!

3. Beaches are overpriced. Always. For everything.

4. The beach can get freezing cold this time of year.

5. The views in the mountains are big and amazing when you can see them without the summer foliage.

6. Sand crack. ‘Nuff said.

7. You dare to be different. Just like, say, a mountaineer.

8. You can have an entire national park pretty much all to yourselves (it’s our backyard).

9. Most of you pass the mountains on the way to the beach, or maybe it’s the same distance either way. Total no brainer.

10. No undertow.