Visiting Blackwater Falls State Park In Davis, West Virginia

One of the best parts about visiting West Virginia was taking advantage of all the free outdoor activities it has to offer, something that’s always helpful seeing as we’re on a tight budget on our road trip.

While staying in Davis WV, one of the places we visited was Blackwater Falls State Park. This was only about 20 minutes from the Airbnb we were staying at and was both free and pet-friendly, so Truffles got to join us too.

There were hardly any other visitors while we were there as the weather wasn’t great, plus it was a Thursday morning in November. That meant the parking lot wasn’t very full, although it’s probably slammed on weekends in the summer.

Next to the parking lot is a Trading Post which I think had a small restaurant attached serving fast food.

There are a couple of ways down to the falls. There’s a paved path that leads down to one overlook which is helpful if you need an accessible route.

Otherwise, there’s a route down that includes 200 steps. You’ll have to take many of those same steps down (and therefore back up again) even when walking down the paved path as they take you closer to the waterfall if you want to go beyond the accessible overlook.

The 200 steps weren’t bad though, especially seeing as we’d had to take 500 down and back up again at a waterfall in Bali a few months ago.

We’d visited Spruce Knob – the highest point in West Virginia – a few days earlier and enjoyed all the information boards they provided about the area. We were therefore pleased to see plenty of similar boards at Blackwater Falls State Park giving us information about the falls, river, geology, local people and more.

It doesn’t take long until you get your first look at Blackwater Falls.

From that overlook, the boardwalk continues down so that you can get closer to the falls.

The boardwalk continues all the way down to a viewing platform, getting you closer to the falls.

This isn’t the only vantage point of Blackwater Falls. If you look up at the hill on the opposite site, you can see another overlook – more about that in a moment.

After spending a few more minutes enjoying the falls, we took a couple more photos and headed back to the parking lot.

We got chatting to another family on the way back up and so walked with them up the accessible path.

Once we arrived back at the parking lot, we hopped in our car and drove around to the Blackwater Falls Overlook that we’d seen from below.

This had another accessible path that was paved. Attached to trees along the path was some kind of story book for kids to enjoy as they walk along.

The State Park appears to have removed some of the trees beyond the overlook to ensure it’s still possible to view the falls from up there.

While chatting to the family earlier on, they suggested we visit Our Lady Of The Pines in Eglon. That’s a church that claims to be the smallest one in 48 states, so after finishing at the falls we drove over there – here’s more about our visit to Our Lady Of The Pines.

Final Thoughts

Blackwater Falls State Park is definitely worth a visit if you’ll be in the Davis area for Seneca Rocks, Spruce Knob, Dolly Sods Wilderness, etc. It’s free, pet-friendly and accessible, with lots of information boards that provide a learning experience while there.

Address

Blackwater Falls State Park, 1584 Blackwater Lodge Rd, Davis, WV 26260