The Mystery of Mothman of Point Pleasant!

The next day we woke up early as I was worried that there would be no parking by the time we got to Pleasant Point which concerned me.  That and I wanted to get an early start on the Mothman festivities, so we grabbed a coffee downstairs from the barista before we checked out.  Again, we got the same vibe as before.  The barista was fine but the greeter and the front desk woman, not so much.  They delivered the required pleasantries, but were very cold towards us.  Again we looked at our jeans.  Were these causing the problem or was that just the vibe of the place.  I don’t know!  Either way, we were ready to possibly solve the mystery of the Mothman so we didn’t care!

Point Pleasant is only about an hour away from Parkersburg so it was a nice short jaunt.  That is until we got behind a motorcycle with female cargo that was going 10-15 under the speed limit.  There is passing in West Virginia, but you have to be quick as it doesn’t last long before you hit a major curve, so we stayed behind the bike.  It was a little frustrating but we were on vacation so we chilled out.

As we saw signs for Point Pleasant we both could barely contain our excitement, so much so that we almost sped right through the town.  Hmm, interesting!  So I turned into a parking lot and pulled by a nearby curb.  Odd, parking had been extremely easy and there appeared to be hardly anyone on the streets.  Were we in the right place?  We slammed our doors and were off to solve the Point Pleasant mystery.

9th Annual Mothman Festival

Well, after a two block walk, we realized that this was indeed the Mothman festival.  It was about 10:00 in the morning and it was pretty quiet.  That and it was a lot smaller than I had expected.  Noah wasn’t surprised at all.   He was raised in a small town and knew what to expect from small town fairs, I on the other hand was confused.  Still, we were ready to check this bad boy festival out and headed to the river front to see the views.

Before we got there, we ran into the Mothman himself, or rather a dude in a costume who was dressed to look like him.  He did the obligatory pose with me, though I found it odd that I could hear music blaring from his iPod.  That and when I saw the photo later on, it looked like he was grabbing my goodies, I think it was the angle, not the Mothman. 

After that distraction, we were off to the riverfront only to find the Mothman Festival in full swing!  I won’t lie, I was tempted to sign up when I saw it online as I have never been in a pageant, but I had missed the deadline.  I am not a fan of pageants, but it was so tempting!  We watched for a few minutes as they paraded the youngest competitors then we moved on as I found it a little disturbing.

We walked along the water, but realized though it was nice, we were away from all the action, so we headed back over to the main drag to catch the Mothman action!  The crowd was a little denser than before which is always a plus when it comes to crazy festivals. 

The Man of the Hour

On our way to the booths selling Mothman merchandise, we came upon the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine Van.  Now, I have seen Scooby Doo maybe once in my life on some strange channel on cable so I had no idea what the hell the van was called, but my friend Noah knew all about it and ran over to get a photo with himself in front of the crazy van as he could not contain his excitement.  The amazing thing is that besides the lack of facial hair, he looked amazingly like Shaggy with his long hair and casual clothes.  I on the other hand had nothing to really offer as I don’t really look like anyone on the show, though Noah mentioned I could pass for Daphne.  I took it as an insult at first as I thought she was the nerdy chick.  I didn’t see that many movies in the 1990s!  He just shook his head and moved onto the booths disappointed in my lack of Scooby Doo pop culture. 

Now, I have to say, I was quite surprised to see so much merchandise created for the supposed Mothman.  There was food, t-shirts, comic books, paintings and jewelry.  All this for some mythical creature that was most likely a Sandhill Crane!  Some of it was amusing while some of it was just plain tacky and expensive.  Noah, wanted a t-shirt, but decided to walk around before buying one as he didn’t want to carry around a plastic bag for the rest of our stay in Pleasant Point.

Goody Grabber!

As we continued our walk through the various booths, we came upon the famous Mothman statue.  There is was in all of its shiny silver glory in the middle of the town square glinting in the sun.  It wasn’t as big as I had expected, but it was still more impressive than the Godzilla statue in Tokyo, so I didn’t complain.  We had come so far we knew what we had to do and proceeded to do stupid poses in front of it while the vendors looked at us like we were idiots.  Please, I guarantee we weren’t the first tourists to make damn fools of ourselves in front of this thing.  After we got the right shot, we continued our window shopping until we ran out of booths. 

At the end of the row, a sight appeared before us that could not be ignored.  There in front of us was a tent housing the infamous Turtleman of Kentucky!  While doing my research, I had read about the Turtleman and how he would be making an appearance at the Mothman Festival, but due to all the excitement, I had forgotten about him.  How could I have forgotten about the Turtleman?!?  So Noah and I paid our dollar and walked into the small blue tent.  Inside we came to face to face with the man, the legend, the Turtleman!

Basically, the Turtleman is known in the region for going into ponds and finding big ass turtles.  Sometimes he keeps them though on his website he makes jokes about the meat, though I don’t know for sure if he makes steaks out of them.  Can people eat turtles?

Fun!

He had two of his turtles with him and was showing demonstrations.  He asked if I would like to pull a stick out of one of the turtle’s mouths, I figured why not?  I ended up looking like a wimp as the turtle dragged me across the tent.  This guy was strong.  I asked how often he got bit by the turtles to which he answered at least once a month and proceeded to show me the scars.  At that moment, I walked away from the turtle.  Holy crap!

The Turtleman didn’t want me to leave the tent freaked out and proceeded to have me partake in a Turtleman trick without a real turtle being involved.  I figured why not, you only live once.  In the end, I proceeded to end up in the arms of the Turtleman in some strange dance lift.  Oh, BTW, the Turtleman is single though as the name implies he does reside in Kentucky so be prepared to move.  All and all, this was a highlight at the Mothman Festival as he is a crazy yet funny guy.  Definitely worth the $1 I paid to see him.

After the Turtleman, I decided to grab a snack in the food area of the festival.  There we past a group of psychics.  Psychics equal fun but not for the price of $20 for 15 minutes.  Talk about highway robbery!  So I continued over to the food stalls and ordered a Mothman Pancake for a hell of a lot less than $20.

Turtleman of Kentucky

The woman at the stall suggested that both Noah and I sign up for the Mothman Pancake eating contest.  Whoever ate the pancake the fastest got a free t-shirt and the title of the fastest pancake eater for 2010.  Tempting as it was, I passed, but Noah realized that if he signed up he could get a discounted pancake and a chance at winning a free t-shirt.  In the end, he threw his hat in the ring.  That meant we would have to stick around until 12:00 at least.  Look, I loved the Mothman Festival, but we were hurting for something to do as we had pretty much seen it all.

So, we headed over to the vintage car area and took pictures with the 1970’s muscle cars while I sipped a chai iced tea.  While admiring the cars, I did get asked if I wanted to participate in a beauty pageant in November, sadly, I would not be in the area and had to gently let her down.  Man, pageants are huge out there!

After posing like Vanna White for photos, we heard the bell strike noon and headed back over to the Mothman Pancake tent.  At the moment, the kids contest was in full swing.  The oldest girl of the group ended up taking the title.  Next the adult hopefuls were called up to the table.  There were four people in total including the reigning 2009 champ all the way back from Baltimore.  Along with the girl from Baltimore, there was a hometown favorite from West Virginia and Noah and one other person from New York State though he was from upstate.  Maybe I got a little cocky, but I have seen Noah eat and I thought Brooklyn totally had this.

Yummy Mothman Pancake

The woman gave the start and the eating commenced.  All contestants had to eat the pancake without the use of hands so I couldn’t help but laugh when their faces hit the whipped cream.  The friend of the other New Yorker and I were like animals as we yelled out the play by play of how the other contestants were doing.  It was a close race between Noah and other guy, but in the end, the other guy won.  I have to say I was a little disappointed as neither of them had swallowed the pancake and I felt it should have been based off of who swallowed the food the fastest not who could cram the whole thing in their mouths the fastest, but it wasn’t my rules.  So we congratulated the guy and his friends while the winner told Noah that he had almost choked to death on the pancake as Noah was a beast!  Noah had been in the leader for ¾ of the race.

Disappointed with his loss, Noah thanked the woman who owned the booth and walked back over to the vendors to buy a glow in the dark Mothman t-shirt.  For the rest of the day, he would speak of the aroma of sweet maple syrup up his nose.  Yummy!

Muscle Car!!!  Woo Wee!

At this point, we knew we had pretty much tapped out all that the Mothman Festival had to offer.  We had originally wanted to stay to hear an account of the Mothman sighting from one of the original members who had encountered Mhim, but that was not until 3:00PM as his time slot had moved.  There was no way we would be able to last that long, so instead, we decided to visit the New River Gorge Bridge to take a hike so to speak.

The drive would take about an hour and a half, so we hit the road but not before stopping to get some chicken at a drive thru at some local joint.  The woman was thrown off by our accent and made small talk and asked how we had been enjoying our visit to West Virginia.  We told her so far it had been a blast and we were excited to be experiencing more fun at the New River Gorge Bridge.  She had mentioned there was base jumping off of it every October and that there was also a new zip line.  We smiled before admitting we were both weenies, she smiled and told us to have a great vacation.  The people in West Virginia are so damn nice and I love them for it, I really do!

Yeah Hikes!

The drive to New River Gorge Bridge was quite eventful as we sped down the freeway.  First off eating while driving is stupid!  We also got a quick peek at Charleston as we cut through the city to get to the bridge.  It wasn’t what I expected, but then again, I was only there for about 10 minutes so my opinion doesn’t count in the long run anyway.  Also, when the road signs in West Virginia tell you to slow down, you’d better do it!  As we were speeding down one of the freeways, we saw an overturned trailer that had hit the cement meridian.  The traffic on the other side of the freeway was blocked for miles.  I sent out good vibes to the poor trucker hoping he was okay.  From there we missed our exit causing us to have to pay for two tolls, which sucked!  Thanks chicken!

Finally, we were near our destination: New River Gorge Bridge!  Now I hate bridges, I really do, so I had wanted a warning when we were close by so that I could brace myself.  From the pictures of the bridge, it looks like you can see it coming a mile a way as it is scary!  The reality is you don’t even know that you are crossing the damn thing as it looks like any other freeway.  The only reason I knew I was on it was because I saw a sign to the right telling me how I was on the largest arch bridge in the US.  Not cool as I didn’t even get to go into my happy place first!  By the end of the trip I would pass over this thing a total of three times cursing all the way.  Good times!

Old Mining Town

We decided to go to the New River Gorge Bridge visitor center to get a stamp for my book because I am a nerd like that and because we wanted to find out about hiking in the area.  But before the hike we went out to the lookout point by the center.  We were told that the steps were strenuous which in the end, they were not.  There were about 100 of them but they were easy to maneuver unless you were older or in bad shape.  It was a nice view, but we were ready for more, so we headed over to the old mining camp trail for a 1.5 mile walk.

Because the New River Gorge Bridge visitor center had said their walk was strenuous we felt that his one would be easy too as we had not been impressed with the other.  It turns out we were wrong.  Like an idiot, I was wearing sandals as I had left my sneakers in the trunk of the car.  I figured if the hike was anything like our other jaunt it would be easy.  It was not.  It was later in the day when we got there so we moved at a fast pace.  The trail was down a side of a mountain with tons of rocks and trees.  From there you came to the entrance of the mining town and then were lead to 800 steps down to the actual living site.  Yes, 800 steps down.  No big deal!

Where's Waldo? Blair Witch Edition

The mining site was pretty cool.  I had wanted to walk near the river, but the trail was too muddy and my sandals would have been ruined so I took photos while Noah ventured on.  The light was starting to fade so my photos were stinking up a storm as I didn’t have a tripod.  I waited for Noah for a while, but nothing.  Eventually, I heard rustling in the trees and had a Blair Witch moment, but it only turned out to be a smiling Noah.  He felt victorious as he had made it to the river.  Yay!

We headed back up the trail, it was okay until we had to climb the 800 steps back up the mountain.  This time, it was a big deal.  I am in good shape, but nothing prepared me for that.  Hiking is easy, lifting up my short legs to climb every last 800 steps sucks!  At the end of the steps, I took a breather because I was sweating up a storm as it was warm and muggy.  After our break, we headed back up the trail to our car.  It was a lot harder the way back up because there were several ways to get up and in sandals, none of them were good.

We did end up talking to a cool lady who was born and raised in West Virginia who told us she had been coming here with her son for years.  She knew the mountain like the back of her hand and walked the trails everyday.  She was bright, funny and very down to earth.  She did get a good laugh out of my shoe choice and was impressed I was able to do the hike with them.  Loved her!

We finally made it to the top and collapsed in the car.  We decided to get to the hotel as it was dark and we needed to feed.  So after getting a well deserved Blizzard from the local Dairy Queen, we checked in to our hotel, cleaned up and headed out to a late dinner. This day had been insane but we both were looking forward to another fun filled morning the next day as we drifted off watching bad TV.