Prince William Forest

I am a few days behind, I regret to say.  This hike actually took place on April 3.  It was the first actually genuinely nice warm lovely day in the Washington DC region.  The weather was cool at first, and I wondered if I should bring a jacket.  I wore layers, a paper thin shirt under a t-shirt and a fleece over that.  Within 10 minutes, the fleece was in the pack, and within 30, the under-layer came off as well.  The sun filtered through the trees and looked as much like elfin dancing beams as I'd ever seen.

The Prince William Forest is a young forest.  If you look at the photo above, there is a sameness to the landscape which is fascinating.  The trees are mostly short, and it allows a good bit of light in - especially in the young springtime.  I'll be excited to see how it greens up when the season turns.  The trail is beautifully maintained, and in fact as we arrived, there was a woman pushing what looked for all the world like a unicycle for a cat.  This was, as Aaron informed me, a trail measuring device.  I wanted to know how she planned to ride it, you see.

About half a mile from where we parked was a campground.  A quaint old, old water tower was there, public restrooms, picnic facilities.  There were tiny cabin-looking structures that were public science experiments!  I'd love to hear someone talk about the kinds of experiments going on in those tiny sheds. I thought from a distance they might be really nice, rather new looking out-houses, but no - they even have a window box and a tiny paned window, and are more narrow than the door to my deck.

The day was quite quiet - people were around, but not many.  It felt like a well-kept secret.  Easily the best part was the waterfall.  We chose it, approximately three miles in, as a snack and rest stop, sitting on the sun-warmed rocks right at the edge of the water.  We could've dipped our feet in, had it been just a hair warmer than it was.  These photos of Aaron and I were taken at the waterfall area on our stop. After our break, we decided to not go the entire 8.5 miles we'd been planning, as the traffic around this area can be quite horrible late in the day and we wanted to make sure to get home in time to make dinner.  And get home on time we did!



Time spent on trail: 2.5 hours
Difficulty:  Easy
Bonuses:  Waterfall, nice clean bathrooms and easily accessible water, myriad options for hike length and setting-out points
View:  Foresty - not spectacular, but the walk is pleasant enough that it's not view-motivated
Kid friendly:  Very