Hungry Mother State Park (Photo by Brad Deel courtesy Visit Virginia)
You can beat the summer heat with a sweet respite weekend in the mountains and hills of Southwest Virginia. Some of the finest jewels of the commonwealth’s network of state parks are here, including one of the oldest, Hungry Mother State Park, and the newest, Clinch River State Park, offering opportunities to swim, canoe, tube, hike and bike.
What’s Old
About 5 miles north of Marion, Hungry Mother is one of Virginia’s first six state parks. It opened in 1937 and features a 108-acre lake with a full-facility beach for swimming. You can rent watercraft or bring your own, and there’s a large network of trails, including a relatively flat one along the lakefront. Enjoy the ride on Virginia Highway 16 from Marion to the park and on into Tazewell County. This twisty, fun, beautiful road is known as the Back of the Dragon. There are some 300 curves along its 32 miles.
What’s Blue
A ceremony was held in June to commemorate the opening of Clinch River State Park. Envisioned as a string of properties offering access along 100 miles of the river, making it Virginia’s first blueway state park, it’s only partially open for now, with its Sugar Hill Unit in St. Paul. There’s no parking fee, and you can leave your vehicle in an access area in a town park at Oxbow Lake and walk in to fish, picnic or tackle the 9 miles of trails, including the Sugar Hill Trail, which gets its name from maple trees that once graced the hill for sugar production. We walked the loop clockwise, and it parallels the river through cool woodlands, then turns upward across the broad, open field that offers great views of buzzards gliding on the updrafts against a mountain backdrop. There are also nearby access points to canoe, kayak or tube.
The Western Front
If you don’t have a tube or other vessel for river exploration, you’ll find outfitters in the town of St. Paul, including Clinch River Adventures and Clinch Life Outfitters. Clinch River Adventures is on the river in town.
The compact downtown is well worth a stroll. Places to stay include The Western Front Hotel, its name a cheeky reference to the community’s wild past. A center for mining and railroads, it was also home to a host of saloons and other adult entertainment that earned a portion of the city a reputation as being more dangerous than the Western Front, the World War I battlefields in France and Belgium.
Across the street is the Amira Co Café. Open and airy, it features quirky, blown-up photos of St. Paul in its bawdier times, including men standing atop what looks like an overturned train.
It seems every town now has at least one brewpub or microbrewery, and St. Paul’s Sugar Hill Brewing Co. is a fine one. We took home 2 liters of its Western Front, a pleasant, light German pilsner that provided perfect sipping while we enjoyed the firefly light show during an early summer evening on the front porch of a mountain cabin.
Sugar Hill Brewing Co. (Photo by Sarah Hauser courtesy Visit Virginia)
Save the Date
FIRST SATURDAYS: The Historic Lincoln Theater in Marion is home to the Song of the Mountains monthly concert series, featuring Americana, bluegrass and traditional music of the Southern Appalachians. songofthemoutains.org
