We were very happy with our time at Ace. It was a nice resort - it reminded me of going to church camp! And the facilities on the camping grounds were much better than I was expecting. The showerhouses were pretty nice with a flushable toilet, shower with warm water, a sink, mirror, and even paper towels in each little room. It worked quite well for us.
On Tuesday morning, we woke up and finished packing everything and putting away the tent. We had decided that we wanted to do a bunch of trails before we left West Virginia on Tuesday. So that morning we hit the trails! Our goal was to run as much as we could so we could cover more ground in less time. Here is some of what we got to see from the trail.
Huge bridge piers!
The following pics are from an old mining town/site.
This is at the top of the hill.
Your family wants you to work safely :)
Chris is standing here at the top of the crazy 821 stairs that lead to the bottom of the mining site.
...Yes, we decided to go down 821 stairs - Chris is off in the distance at the bottom of the stairs (mind you, I am NOT standing at the top :)
...and then we went back up the 821 stairs - I was ready to start back up to the top when I read on the sign that there are copperheads and rattlesnakes in the old building structures (that are off the path they recommend for you to stay on)!
me running on the trails...as I recall, I was pretty tired at this point in time
While we were on the easy trail just before the mine site, I decided to run ahead of Chris since he stopped to look at one of the signs. I had gone a little way, and then Chris yelled "hey, did you see this!" And I said "see what?" Well, what I ended up not seeing in the middle of the trail was a 6-foot long king snake!!! Yikes!! No, I did not go back to look at it once Chris told me about it. He said it was literally laying right across the trail. I must have thought it was a small log and just hopped over it. Let's just say I am so so happy that I did not step on it and that I did step over it. I'm also glad that I didn't realize it was a snake. I think I would've freaked out a little bit!! And I am super happy that it decided to leave me alone and not bite me. King snakes are not poisonous, but it still would've probably hurt like crazy! I think that God was watching out that day :)
I was glad when we finally got back to the car that morning. I think we did around 6 miles of trails (plus the stairs) in about 3 hours. That may not sound that spectacular, but I felt like it was a pretty good accomplishment for me. Definitely a good workout.
After a visit to the Visitor's Center to wash our faces and freshen up a bit, it was time to say goodbye to WV :(
We started making our way back towards Cincinnati for the next part of our trip. I took a nap while Chris drove (which is very normal) and he even let me drive part of the way (which is not always normal) since he was tired.
After calling the lady at the hotel in Cincinnati and her struggling to tell us directions to the hotel (since I forgot to look up directions beforehand, oops!), we found the Millennium Hotel in downtown Cincinnati. We were excited because we had used Hotwire for the two nights that we were staying in Cincinnati to pay reasonable prices for nicer hotels than we normally stay in. After getting up to our room, we were so glad to take showers before going to dinner. We were both looking forward to a nice dinner. I decided to ask the lady at the desk if there were any restaurants by the river and she said there were quite a few on the Newport side. She said it would take 15 minutes to walk there. So we decided to trust her and head our way across the river (most stupid decision ever!).
We started walking and then realized that I didn't ask how to get across the river by foot. I had previously read about the pedestrian bridge across the river, so we made our way across it. By the time we got to the other side of the river, I think we had been walking for about 30 minutes! By this point, Chris was frustrated (and I was too) and he was starting to get blisters on his feet from his sandals - he's not used to walking long distances in them :( From there we walked around a bit to look for all of these restaurants. Well, we found a few, but they didn't look very good to us. We didn't know if we had to walk even further to really find all of the restaurants and we had no clue which direction to go. After letting out some of our frustration and sitting for a minute, we decided that we were giving up on Newport. Back across the river without dinner we went!
We were going to Rock Bottom Brewery by Fountain Square (best decision ever!). (We had actually talked about going there in the first place but I decided to drag us across the river and back first!) After another 20 minutes of walking, we could never have been so happy to sit down and get some water - we were kind of sweaty by this point. And Chris was happy to try some of their house beer!
The food was good and we both got the clean plate award since Chris helped me finish mine :)
Chris was feeling a little better about the situation after getting some food and a couple beers :)
After leaving Rock Bottom, we took a look outside at Fountain Square. The fountain is really pretty and is lit up nicely at night.
We also decided that we needed some ice cream too before heading back to the hotel. And Graeter's (I guess a chain, at least in Cincinnati) was also in Fountain Square so we went there. I'm glad we did because it was delicious!
(This picture cracks me up because we hardly ever make funny faces when taking pics together. I saw Chris sticking his tongue out and thought it would be fun too!!)
Here is the view from our room:
After being well rested and getting to sleep in a little (at least for me), we both got in a workout, got showered and then headed to get breakfast. We found a place called Bruegger's Bagels downtown. We had some bagels and then walked back to the hotel to get our things and checkout. Then we headed to King's Island!
the Bengals stadium
the pedestrian bridge we walked across the night before :)
View of the park from the road
We had a great day at King's Island. We rode so many roller coasters - I think I lost count. I can definitely say that's the most I've ever ridden in one day. And I picked the highest and fastest one in the park (Diamondback) to ride first! It was a great ride since there were several spots where your stomach came up to your throat! Some others we rode were Flight of Fear (the roller coaster inside in the dark), Firehawk (one where you're laying on your stomach like Superman for the whole thing), Vertigo (where you go through the ride both forwards and backwards leaving you with the feeling of vertigo afterwards), Flight (an older coaster where you hang below the track) and Vortex (an older roller coaster with a couple corkscrews and a couple loop-da-loops). And I can't forget about the Beast! People had told me that it's really a rough ride, but I couldn't believe it after riding it myself! It was really shaking you around and going really fast for a wooden roller coaster. I guess that's why it's the longest and fastest wooden coaster! I was glad I rode it but I don't know about doing it again! It was also really hot that day, so we wanted to get wet. After putting on our swimsuits underneath our clothes, we hit the log ride and the whitewater canyon. It felt so good to get cooled off! We also made a walk out to the water park side and decided we would do that next time. Then we rode the really slow train back to the other side of the park.
We checked into our hotel for the night, which was a really nice Hyatt out near King's Island. We couldn't believe how nice it was and how nice the rooms were! We were glad to be there so we could get showered and have some dinner. This time we decided to drive to find dinner :) and we found Carraba's which I had never had before. It was definitely a good decision. The food was really yummy and it was a cool environment with the open kitchen - it made it feel like you were in an Italian house! Chris ordered chicken marsala with potatoes and I had the vegetable lasagna. It was wonderful and I was stuffed! We just chilled in the hotel the rest of that night. I was really tired and ended up going to bed by like 9:30!
Here are some pics of the hotel:
I love the blue and brown colors together!
The next morning I woke up with this weird rash on my arms. At first I was afraid that it might be poison ivy (which I've never had before). I was glad to find out that it was most likely just a heat rash - it made sense since we had been in the heat and sun a lot the day before.
That day we took our time getting up and around and then made our way back to Columbus to pick up Maggie. She seemed really happy and excited to see us and we were glad to have her back too!
Overall, it was a great trip for us. I discovered that I in fact do like whitewater rafting (like Chris thought I would), but I just had to ease my way into it. We had a blast going through the bigger rapids on the second day. It was wonderful being in nature and getting to hit some trails. West Virginia is such a beautiful state and I'm glad we got to see it together. It was also fun getting to camp since we hadn't done it in a while - it can be so relaxing to be taken away from technology and everything that can be distracting in our everyday life. We also had some fun screaming on the coasters at King's Island :)
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