A slightly boring story.

Been working on attention-grabbing headlines. What do you think? Did it work? Are you grabbed?

While Ida and I were in Philly, Matt texted me these pictures from a hike in Clifton at Hemlock Overlook, which I had never heard of. A few days later, after we were back, the kids and I planned to meet some friends, Holly and Chrissy and their kids, at a trail near Bull Run. I entered the address in my GPS app, and after about 20 minutes I started thinking we were not going in the right direction. Around that time Theo recognized where we were. "Hey, this is where we went with Dad on Saturday." I thought that was kind of random and funny--that we had ended up not only at the wrong place but also at the exact random place the boys had just been with Matt a few days earlier.

As a side note, on the accidental way to Hemlock I discovered that historic Clifton is super cute and charming. I want to go back and walk around the little town center we drove through. It would be an especially beautiful drive and walk in the fall, and it was only 20 minutes from our house.

Anyway, I figured it out, figured out where we actually needed to be, and called my friends and they waited for us. Apparently when I told the app to take us to Bull Run Regional Park, it thought we were going to a different part of the trail, which is huge and spans from Manassas down past Burke. While my friends had both used a different app, which sent them to a location in Chantilly which was actually a playground next to a waterpark. For my part I had imagined we would be going on a trail near the battlefield in Manassas (as in, the Battle of Bull Run), which we've been to a few times many years ago. Which was also wrong.

I studied a map of Bull Run and realized that Fountainhead, where we went a month or so ago and where I ran the trail half last year, is also part of the same Bull Run/Occoquan Trail, which I hadn't realized.

I know this is already the most boring story ever, but the point is that I keep learning more and more about the millions of trails in NoVA. And so many of them are connected too. I just want to go on hikes every week. There's no way we'll ever see them all.

Maybe you can't quite tell in these pictures, but my kids got SO so dirty on this hike, especially Ida. 

After a little asking around, we eventually found a trail (obviously) which is right next to the water park, Atlantis. We only walked about a 1/2 mile on it since it had taken so long to find it. I spent most of the time talking with my friends and the kids ran around and played. And got super dirty. With some more research later I found that the trail we went on actually follows Cub Run and that people go there in the spring to see millions of bluebells. So we'll have to go back and see that sometime.

Usually when we go on hikes on our own we just sort of explore until we find where we're supposed to be, and sometimes we never find it because we find something else. And there isn't always that much help online. Luckily the friends we were meeting were patient and easygoing about this approach.

My kids were enamored with the water park we parked next to, so I promised them we'd go back on our next water day. And we did, 3 days later. And I took exactly one picture.

Thanks, Bull Run in all your incarnations. We had fun. And we'll be back.