Virginia, Alexandria - Monday, September 26, 2016 - Pohick Bay Regional Park

For the past week we have been walking 3 miles after breakfast.  One morning we headed for the marina that is here in Pohick Regional Park.

The marina has a nice building you can rent for parties.  It’s nice to sit on the deck and enjoy the view.

Leaves aren’t starting to turn out here and very few wildflowers are blooming.  We see these blooming trees every once in a while.

Our three miles out here is quite a bit more strenuous than the three miles we were walking daily when we were in Kansas.  We are going downhill half of the time and then back uphill the other half.  The walk back from the marina just about did us in – these pictures don’t do the hill justice.  We should have known it was going to be bad when they had “steep hill” signs posted – duh.

Saturday we took off on the motorcycle to visit the Patriot Harley Davidson store.  They were having an event to kick off the introduction of the 2017 bikes.  When we got there they had lots of 2016’s but we didn’t see a single 2017 bike.  Greg did get a new helmet.  His old one had seen better days, but he won’t stand out now.  His new one is just plain black, the old one looked like a bloodshot eyeball.  We even opted out of the free hamburger lunch and went down the road to Freddies.

This morning we (I) decided that our walk should be to see the Mason Neck State Park.  Then entrance to the park is a mile from the campground.

The paved path follows Gunston Road from the campground to the entrance.

Not sure if this is a wildflower, but I like cattails.

The trail into the park included a couple of bridges over places that looked like water might wash through in heavy rains.

This particular path is paved for three miles into the park and ends at the Belmont Bay.  We didn’t go all the way to the Bay.  If we had gone to the Bay and then back to the campground that would have put us at eight miles for the day.  That is just a bit too much for us right now.

There are a lot of downed trees along the trail, not sure if this is just from aging trees or if weather has brought some of them down.  This park if also a wildlife refuge – once again we saw no wildlife, birds weren’t even chirping here!