Leesylvania

As I mentioned previously, on Sunday we went to Leesylvania State Park for a nice little hike.  We chose a 2 mile trail called Lee's Woods Trail.  Here is the description from the website:

"Lee's Woods Trail

The Lee's Woods Trail Is a 1.96 mile moderate difficulty trail with a hard-packed dirt and rock dust surface and terraced steps which is accessible from the road near the entrance to the picnic area. This interpretive trail loops through historic ground including the sites of the homesteads of the Fairfax and Lee families, the Lee family cemetery and gardens, and Free Stone Point. As the trail loops out to Free Stone Point, you are walking the same ground where, General Robert E. Lee ordered the blockade of the Potomac during the Civil War hoping to cut off the North's water access to Washington D.C. Free Stone Point offered an elevated position where a battery of 32 pound cannons was positioned. At the point, you can see a cannon and imagine the deadly plunging fire the South could rain down upon approaching ships."

We happened to take the trail backwards, not that it really matters.  I snapped a bunch of pictures during the walk. It was definitely challenging at times- some of the hills were very steep.  If it had been a trail run it would have kicked my a$$. Luckily we were walking and taking in the sights, too.  On the way there, we stopped at Wawa and got lunch and I packed it into my little backpack so we could stop and eat if we got hungry.  We didn't end up stopping, but it was nice to have our food along with us.  I will definitely do this again, maybe on a different trail(s) next time!

First picture is one of the many bald eagles we saw.  He's that black/white spec in the middle of the pic ;)

This is all that remains of the Henry Fairfax house, which overlooked the river.  It's the chimney.  You can see both floors' fireplaces.  The artist's rendering of the house was really beautiful.  They were definitely rich.

Joey is walking in the grass:

The Fairfax house is to the right, and this is looking over the ridge onto the Potomac and also where the truck was parked:

One of my favorite stops on the trail is the Lee- Fairfax Cemetary.  If you read the below plaques, you will see that they know Henry and Elizabeth Fairfax are buried there within the fenced in area, and that Henry and Lucy Lee are buried somewhere around that area.  Creepy.

As you can see, the trail gets a little steep/rough.  Although I think this picture was taken when we realized we were no longer on the right trail....

One of the times I whipped out my camera for insurance purposes in case Joey fell while doing something stupid...

Hanging out in Lucy's gardens. Big tree fall hard.

You can see some of her Daffodils blooming in the background of the below picture.  It was really cool to think that they had been planted 300 years ago, and they still come back every year.  The forest has obviously grown up around the gardens since then, so there are random daffodils growing everywhere.  It was really obvious they were planted there on purpose:

Such a shame that someone in the 1950's authorized construction and ultimately, the demolition of the Lee home site.

All that remains are some stones from the foundation, marked by those signs.  In case you are confused, this in the house of Henry Lee II, whose son, Harry, was the father of Robert E. Lee, Civil War General.  So it's Bobby Lee's Granddaddy's house.

This was their front yard. How beautiful. They walked outside to this every day. The well was up on the right hand side of this picture. It is always hauntingly beautiful to walk on the same grounds as such significant people did hundreds of years ago.

AAANNNDDDD then we found a vine.

Luckily we survived hanging from a random vine and made it back to the Fairfax house, where we decided it was too windy to eat lunch by the water and headed home for Nascar.

I definitely recommend doing this or any of the trails in Leesylvania. It's $5 to get into the park and there are plenty of things to do and look at there.  Major bonus is it's 5 miles from our house.  Now we just need to get a boat............ ;)

~SG