KANAWHA COUNTY, WV (WOWK) – If you’re looking for a place for your family to enjoy outside, the Mountain State has plenty to choose from, including Meadowood Park in western Kanawha County!

This hidden gem offers plenty to do for the entire family including hiking, fishing and plenty of fun for the kids! Bill Currey, co-founder and chairman of the Coal River Group, says the park offers something for just about everyone.

“This park offers it all! I mean, it’s a nature park – it’s not a baseball field or a soccer field – it’s a series of six different hiking trails,” says Curry. “You’ve got an eight-acre lake full of fish. You’ve got 2,000 feet of frontage by the beautiful falls hear of the coal river here, which is also full of fish. Then you have the jungle gym and you have the picnic shelters within the park, and it’s the atmosphere.”

Hiking on the trails, two public boat launch sites on the Coal River Water Trail and beautiful Pettigrew Lake along with soccer fields. there’s also Big Bend Golf course across the river to swing a club.

But the best part about it, if you decide to hit the water but don’t have a boat, is that you can rent a canoe or kayak at Coal River Kayak, which is located at the park to allow you to explore 88 miles of waves on the Coal River Water Trail. That itself is a major success story involving Currey, after pollution and sedimentation severely affected the water quality of the watershed in the late 20th Century.

“The Little Coal River’s 21 miles is probably some of the cleanest, most productive – fish wise – sections that have ever been restored in the United States,” says Currey.

Currey hopes that with all of the hours that have been put into making the Coal River watershed one of the best waterways in the state, more people will want to explore the waves for the first time just like he did.