This was truly an entirely hiking-filled vacation, and the highlights were the gorgeous views of the lake within the park and surrounding mountains, particularly from Molly’s Knob, offering a sweeping view.

Smith Mountain Lake State Park is located in southwest-ish Virginia, about 40 minutes east of Roanoke, 2.5 hours southwest of Richmond, 3 hours north of Charlotte. The lake itself is a man-made reservoir of immense proportions. The shoreline measures 500 miles and the lake is 40 miles across. In fact, in 2023, Travel + Leisure magazine, called Smith Mountain Lake (SML to locals) the “Lake Tahoe of the East”. The shoreline is dotted with homes for both locals and vacationers and is a popular spot for people to rent houses.

Fallingwater Cascades, located off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Bedford County, is located just a few miles north of the popular Peaks of Otter area. This trail is 1.0 miles in total length (down and back) and runs along the cascades with pretty views of the cascades themselves and small pools of mountain water. The trail is entirely a descent to the base of the cascades followed by an ascent back up with the total elevation change of about 365 feet. This area is particularly pretty in the spring and fall.

Abbott Lake Trail is located about 50 minutes north of Roanoke, VA, in Bedford in the heart of the area known as Peaks of Otter, and is located right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. For more information on the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, which travels through Virginia and North Carolina.

Sharp Top Mountain Trail is labelled - appropriately - as strenuous. The trail does flatten out a little bit at points along the way but it is a steep upward climb, gaining over 1300 feet in elevation in 1.5 miles. Large segments are basically carved rock stairs. One way to think about this in a different scale: this is basically like climbing 130 flights of stairs over a 1.5 mile distance.

A couple of years ago we visited Watoga State Park for the first time. Coming of off no travel for 18 months due to the start of Covid, this was also our first foray into staying at a state park. We had a great trip and have since visited a multitude of state parks across the states of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. What we didn’t do much of during that first trip to Watoga is spend time exploring the hiking within the park itself. Instead, we mostly explored the broader Pocahontas County region, which has a lot on offer!

On our fourth (and final) full day at Watoga State Park, we were confronted with spotty rain and the threat of thunderstorms. So, we ruled out a morning hike and an afternoon bike ride on the Greenbrier River Trail and instead came up with a new itinerary. We hung out in our cabin in the morning reading, headed north 30 minutes to the town of Marlinton for lunch, visited the Cranberry Mountain Nature Center, crammed in a 1.5 mile roundtrip hike to a beautiful series of waterfalls, before returning to Marlinton for dinner right on the Greenbrier River. Not a bad day at all for one that was entirely different than our original plans!

On our third full day at Watoga State Park, we hiked Ann Bailey Trail (6 miles roundtrip) out to a fire tower and a loop trail that combined Busch Settlement Trail, North Boundary Trail, Buck & Doe Trail, and Bear Pen Trail (3 miles total). We ended the day by grabbing soft serve ice cream cones from nearby Jack Horner’s Corner.

On our second full day at Watoga State Park, we hiked Monongaseneka Trail (5.5 miles after we added some neighboring trails to create a loop plus 2 miles on bike to return to our car), and biked 15 miles on the Greenbrier River Trail, which we accessed about 30 minutes away so that we could catch the segment of the trail through the 400-foot long Droop Mountain Tunnel.