A WVU student poses for a photo with the Mothman Statue in Point Pleasant.

Now that West Virginia’s rolling mountains have turned from green to fall’s signature patchwork colors, and then to bare limbs waiting for spring’s breath of life. Now that the cold and snow has arrived to the state and to Morgantown. Now that fall’s days have expired and we are officially in winter, it feels like the most wonderful time of the year to look back on summer around the state.

This past summer, West Virginia University photography, social media and marketing teams traveled West Virginia with “Let’s go.” flags in hand to celebrate the beauty of the state and the people who proudly wave the “Flying WV.”

The ends of trails. The tops of mountains. The streams and the scenes that make this state special — those were the destinations around the state that officials wanted to highlight – and to put West Virginians in the middle of them.

Some of the state’s beauty requires ascending to overlooks that allow our vision to be carried across valleys and into a gradient of mountains that roll into the horizon line. Those give the meaning of being a Mountaineer a pretty literal spin.

Other destinations require descending along steps, trails, rocks or rivers – often finding bodies of water instead of reaching for the clouds.

Cranberry Glades was one of the stops for WVU students traveling around the state.

What do the Mothman Statue, Cranberry Glades, the Green Bank Telescope and the State Fair of West Virginia have in common? Nothing besides being in West Virginia and being well-known by the people who live here.

This project took officials to those places, the State Capitol, Harpers Ferry, Blackwater Falls, New River Gorge and everywhere else in between.

WVU students made their way to Blackwater Falls.