Monday, February 08, 2016

Huntley Meadows and Lake Accotink, Two Fantastic Hikes Just Outside the Beltway

Yesterday was chilly and overcast, but that hardly seemed like a good reason to stay indoors. I managed to get not one, but two little hikes in! The first was to do some geocaching at Huntley Meadows and the second was to catch up with our Cousin Doug over at Lake Accotink. I'd been to both locations, but they are both fantastic and well worth multiple visits.

A word of caution about accessing Lake Accotink. We followed the Google Recommended directions, and ended up here:

I didn't catch it until we "arrived," apparently Google expected us to stop at a random suburban street and hoof it over forest and water until we reached the center of the park. In other words, the random road that you stop at is nowhere near the official entrance to the park. Re-routing us to the park entrance, we realized we needed to drive another 10~15 minutes before we'd be at the parking lot.

Luckily, Cousin Doug made the same error assumption we did and we both arrived at this random point at the same time. It was a thing of beauty.

Rather than drive to the park entrance, Doug noticed a trail access point not too far down the road. We ended up parking our cars at Inverchapel Rd and Ellet Rd. The Accotink trail is a loop, so jumping on it here was equivalent to driving to the main entrance. Good catch Doug!

What a fun way to spend a Sunday!

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