Rafters on the Lower Gorge look like specks from the rim, and the steel arch of the New River Gorge Bridge hangs in that same sandstone cut. From Fayetteville, licensed outfitters put boats on the Lower Gorge from April through October, Class III to V. Walk the rim in the morning and you can still make an afternoon raft trip from town.
The Endless Wall is the rim walk, a boardwalk and overlooks with the gorge under you. Long Point ends on a prow of rock aimed at the bridge. Both start on the Fayetteville side.
The National Park Service does not run a developed campground inside New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. The pads that exist are primitive and first-come. They fill in summer and on fall weekends.
The electric night is Babcock State Park, 20 miles southeast of the bridge beside the Glade Creek mill. The campground runs mid-April through late October. Book that site first, then the van.
On Bridge Day, Fayetteville and the gorge take a big day crowd on the same fall weekend those primitive pads are already first-come, so the night is Babcock, booked early. South of the mill, the Greenbrier Valley is a Lewisburg week.
Seneca Rocks, Dolly Sods, and Blackwater Falls
North of the gorge, the week turns into ridge and plateau. Seneca Rocks is a thin quartzite blade, and from Seneca Shadows Campground, across the highway, you can see it from most of the sites. Recreation.gov lists a 35-foot maximum on an electric site there as of September 2026, mid-April through late October.
Dolly Sods is the open plateau north of the fin, spruce permanently bent one way and a rock jumble at Bear Rocks. Forest Roads 19 and 75 are the way in, rough enough that high-clearance is the honest call. Snow typically shuts those roads from January through early May.
Spruce Knob Lake Campground is a hardwoods loop near the lake, no electric and no dump station, open mid-April through mid-October. Recreation.gov caps trailers and vans at 30 feet as of September 2026. If you need more length or sleeping space than these highland loops allow, look at RVs for rent in West Virginia.
Blackwater Falls drops in one dark, tea-colored sheet into a wooded gorge. You can still camp here when the Dolly Sods roads are in snow. Canaan Valley, next door, adds water hookups and ski slopes in that same season.
Davis, Thomas, and Elkins are the towns you keep passing between the plateau and the falls. A steam train still runs out of the old lumber town at Cass, a railroad day when you are already in the highlands.
Summersville Lake and Battle Run
Sandstone walls drop straight into Summersville Lake, and the water in that bowl is quarry-blue. Battle Run is the Corps campground on that shore, electric hookups and a dump station. The Army Corps of Engineers calls this "the largest lake in the state" and lists a 30-foot cap as of September 2026, with the loop open May through mid-October.
At the far eastern end of the state, Harpers Ferry is a walking day where the Shenandoah meets the Potomac. You walk the Civil War streets and the John Brown ground, and you sleep somewhere else. East of that confluence you are in Maryland and Virginia, with Roanoke on the Virginia side.
The southern coalfields around Van are a different week, and Kentucky is the continuation if you keep west. North of the highland towns, Pittsburgh and Ohio pick up the trip.