Pyrite Mine Trail at Prince William Forrest Park

Or the "scenic loop to the pyrite mine but is actually a few trails put together" is what it should be called instead of Pyrite Mine Trail.  It's a good thing S had AllTrails on his phone so we could tell if were on track or not.  It would have been a shorter hike if he hadn't.

We parked at the Turkey Run Educational Center and walked to the Turkey Run Ridge Trail.  This trail is 1.4 miles and follows dark blue blazes.  It wasn't very scenic...being winter and all.  Towards the end, it does follow the stream a bit.  We didn't encounter many on this part of the trail.  It is a relatively easy trail with not much elevation gain.

For the most part it's trees, trails, leaves, and that's about it this time of year.  It was really quiet.  I mean we didn't hear birds, squirrels, much of anything at this point of our hike.  It was rather interesting.  I mean, I thought for sure we'd at least encounter a squirrel or two by now.  

I have this thing about photography fungi.  I find them to be interesting with all their sizes, shapes, colors, and where they grow.  They just photograph so neat and look so cool.

We trekked on...the Turkey Run Ridge Trail intersects at the South Valley Trail.  This is long trail, but we were only on a portion of the trail.  The South Valley Trail is 8.7 miles and is the longest trail in the park.   It's marked with a white blaze.

This part of the South Valley Trail is a bit more hilly than the Turkey Run Ridge Trail.  There were a few leg burning climbs up root infested, rocky, narrow sections of trail.  These types of inclines seemed to come at perfect intervals.  There were just enough for my out of shape legs to handle.

The trail follows the South Fork of Quantico Creek.  There are a few photo ops in the beginning with some small-ish water falls.  It was pretty and made for a more interesting section of trail.  Of course, I had to stop to photograph the little water falls.  They were prettier than the brownish grey of all the other scenery.

We came upon this tree.  I thought it was really strange to see a bald tree.  I mean, all the bark is completely off the tree and it lies in a pile at the base of the tree.  I said it must have been completely infested with termites and the woodpeckers have pecked the crap out of it for the bark to completely fall off like that. It was the strangest thing I think I had seen as far as trees go.  I just had to share that.  It just looked bizarre.

The creek does open up and gets wider at this point.  There are a few more little water falls.  As witnessed by this photograph.  Also, you can see S's finger.  He climbed down this slope to take this photo for me.

I know the last time we were here for car camping, there was some part of the creek where we all climbed out on the rocks to take a picture, but it was never posted on the Internet for me to snag..

I think this was the steepest part of our trek today.  I know I've done a lot of whining about how my legs aren't getting stronger and it just seemed like no matter how many trips we took I'm always huffing and puffing at the tops of these inclines.  Well, today I wasn't.  Even though we haven't been out hiking for almost a month, I climbed this and was a little winded at the top, but not as bad as before.

S said I should get down on my knees and take this photo to make it look stepper than it actually was.  And the top wasn't really the top.  It did continue a upwards a little bit after the top of this picture.

At the intersection of South Valley Trail and North Valley Trail, we got a little lost.  The AllTrails trail looked like we were to turn left and go up the Pyrite Mine Road.  But shortly after, we realized that wasn't where we were supposed to be.  I thought I had found the little jog that connected us to the larger trail, but it turned out to be a wrong way.  I mean like there's not even a trail there wrong way, as you can see here.  

SO we turned back to the intersection to see if maybe there was something we missed.  Maybe a trail we didn't see?  Should try instead?  *shrugs*  We walked back and crossed a rather large bridge....which I didn't photograph for some reason.  We turned left up a gravel trail and immediately I noticed boundary signs.  I thought, "That's weird."  But we kept hiking.

We noticed a rather large private residence up on a hill and some private property signs on the opposite side of the trail.  I was wondering where this was leading, but S said we were headed in the right direction now.  So, we kept hiking.  And then...low and behold

Eureka!  We have it!  The North Valley Trail!  LOL  This is a 2.6 mile trail that is marked with a light blue blaze and follows along Quantico Creek, too.  We continued on this, which will take you to the old pyrite mine site.

As we were sitting there munching on the homemade, chewy granola bars I made, I was thinking, "What properties does pyrite have for there to be a need to mine it?  I should look that up when we get home."  Yeah...I didn't read the sign.  As we walked down the trail, S said, "Do you know why they mined for pyrite?"  I told him I was going to look that up when we got home.  LOL  Apparently, pyrite has a large amount of sulfur which is used in glass, soap, bleach, textiles, paper, dye, medicine, sugar, rubber, and fertilizer.  Interesting.  Did not know that.

I also asked him if it reclaimed itself, as sometimes mother nature does, or if it had help.  He said they planted about 5000 trees as the land was so decimated that it couldn't reclaim itself.  There are a couple of other scenic stops along this trail.

After crossing a bridge, we continued up the North Valley Trail.  I think if we had started off in this direction, we might have had a better chance of following the trail and not getting lost, BUT we didn't.  LOL

Here is another one of the scenic stops along this trail.  It's the pyrite mine's foundation.  There are three main buildings to the mine site.  There is also a commissary building that I didn't take a picture of.

For the most part, this trail is pretty level.  There are a few small hills, but that will change when you get towards the end of this part of our loop.  There are some pretty steep inclines where you will have to scramble over many roots.  The trail is pretty narrow at times, but is very scenic; following Quantico Creek.

At this point, my legs are feeling heavy.  My knee is sore.  My ankle, which I twisted the other day walking the dog, is bugging me.  We've had to stop three times for my feet, which I don't think was too bad at this point.  I mean, we have been hiking for quite a while and have stopped more for shorter trips.  Yet, I press on and just keep hiking.

It doesn't appear that we're still on the trail at various points through out trip.  It's like whomever marked this trail on AllTrails did some whack hiking and went all over the place.  OR their GPS wasn't marking them correctly one of the two.  As long as we're headed in the same general direction, it's all good, right?

We hit another intersection.  Oh great!  Where are we supposed to go now?  It doesn't look like we're on the trail AT ALL now.  LOL


We decide to turn left and head towards parking lot E on the Quantico Falls Trail.  This is a short stint between the North Valley Trail and the Lake One Road.  But I'm thinking, we're not parked at parking lot E.  How do we get from parking lot E to the Turkey Run Educational Center?  Oh well, I guess we'll figure that out when we get there.

That trail dead ends at Lake One Road.  We turn left, away from parking lot E and it looks like we're on the trail, but shortly after, we're not on the trail any more.  It's as if we were supposed to turn left in the woods somewhere that's not a trail.  I have no clue how this person who marked this trail actually DID hike it.

So...we turned around...again.  At this point, I pulled out the trail map from the park and figured out that we could take the Mary Bird Branch Trail back to the Turkey Run Educational Center and the truck.

This is a .5 mile trail between the Lake One Road and Old Black Top Road.  There are LOTS of downed trees.  It's a very low lying area and several boardwalks carry you over mucky and muddy sections of the forest.

Then you will cross the creek and start to ascend back towards Turkey Run Ridge, the educational center, and the parking lot.  At this point, my legs are SERIOUSLY bugging me.  I'm waiting for my hips to start acting up, too.  We stopped one more time for my feet, which I thought was pretty good.  They weren't KILLING me, but thought I would prevent that from happening.  I remember this part of the trail from our car camping trip here earlier.  This was hell for me on that trip, but not so much now.  Maybe there is something to these legs building some strength after all?

We reach the top of the trail and have hit the road that takes us back to the truck.  YAY!

So, all in all we've learned NOT to trust any trails posted and to do more research on trails before we take them, if possible.  I know I wasn't much help last night when he picked it.  I think I was sleeping from my 2 rita dinner....  LOL  This park has tons of trails with many loop combinations.  We highly recommend a visit here if you can.

Bull Run Mountain

Bull Run Mountain was a nice day trip. We started off at the visitors center where they had a couple of bird feeders which automatically caught the eye of C. I thought we would never hit the trail lol. After a few minutes I was able to get her attention and we were out the door and heading towards the trail. It was a cold snowy day and the trail had maybe a inch or so of snow cover.

Our first point of interest on the trail was Chapmans Mill which was built in 1742 by the Chapmans that produced wheat and corn. It burnt down in 1998. There are also some other ruins there.

From there the trail rose uphill gradually for 2.2 miles. Along the way we passed a few other hikers and a couple of trail runners. I was little amazed there were actually others out here with the weather conditions. As we are still noob hikers we are learning that there are a lot of others that enjoy the raw conditions. 

Once we arrived at the top of Bull Run Mountain *as we huffed to catch our breath after the last bit of elevation gain kicked our unfit butts* we were treated to some very nice views. We spent a bit of time there taking pictures, eating a protein bar and just soaking up the amazing treat we earned.

We took a different trail down. Sorry I can not remember the name of the trails we took as I writing about it almost a month later. ON the way down we encountered a very rapid and steep elevation drop. *whew* Glad we didn't come up that way. Along this trail we came across a few neat things of nature. There was a mountain stream , some of it was frozen and some where not. We took a few pictures of some neat ice formations of of logs.

We really enjoyed this hike and the location is real close to where we live, so we will probably return several more times in the future.

G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area

Man that IS a mouthful!!  GRTMA is in the middle of nowhere...I really should have read more about where we were going and taken a GOOD map and print out of a description of the loop.  I...did not.  I am such a hiking noob it's not even funny.

The GPS took us completely to the wrong parking area.  No wonder we got off on the wrong trail.  We were hiking  the AT and thought we were on the loop.  Now that I look at the maps a little better, we were no where NEAR the loop we were trying to hike.  *sigh*

We're driving along this road that keeps getting narrower and narrower and losing it's surface.  Eventually, it's down to a dirt/gravel concoction that has GYNORMOUS pot holes in it.  Good thing we didn't try to drive the mustang that day!  We never would have made it!

Now, I did read that this is a hunting area so be sure to wear some orange, which we didn't.  *snort*  I must say though, it was the weirdest thing for us to hike around and hear gun shots going off.  Or rifle shots, I guess you'd call them?  Being SO not a hunter, I honestly have no clue.

When we got out of the truck, we were immediately greeted by a dog with a radio collar and bells on.  It was adorable!  Not quite sure what kind of dog it was.  It looked like a cross between a golden and an Irish setter.  I've not quite seen that breed before and well, when I was single (or pretending to be as the ex worked nights) I used to watch the dog shows just to learn the different breeds.

We checked the map, geared up and hit the trail.  The hunting party went left and we went right.  I figured we were on the right path as it was a loop.  *shaking head*  Jackson apparently wanted to join us on our hike instead of his hunting family.  I finally told Jackson to come with me and headed towards his family.  He caught up with them and I turned around and headed back up our trail.

It was a warm day.  We immediately started to strip layers.  I'm not sure what the temperature was that day, but I think it got up to at least 40 if not low 50s.  I really was warm.

The trail we were on started with a brief walk through the woods to some plains type grass lined trails.  This was short lived and we were in the woods again.  This was definitely going to be a muddy trip when we had to walk partly down a small stream on the trail.  It's all good!  Boots were meant to get wet and dirty!

We were following white blazes.  *snort*  Such noobs we are!  LOL  We just keep walking through the woods.  Up some inclines, down more hills; we just keep swimming walking and following those white blazes.  Sorry, a little habit from that Nemo movie.  At one point, I stop and say, "Do you hear water?"  S, "Yup."  We trek down this descent into a gorge with giant rocks and a nice stream.

There were some large logs that you could cross, but it was more fun to scramble over the rocks.  I started to cross on one of the logs, but S just flew past me walking over the rocks.  This is where I really enjoy having trekking poles.  Crossing water is SO much easier to accomplish with trekking poles.  I never feel like I'm going to completely lose my balance and fall into the water.  They help me take larger steps than I would have.  With my knees and feet, I never know what's going to give first, so I'm always hesitant to just step not knowing what's going to give if I over-exert myself.  I know it's not the best way to hike, but with my health issues, I don't want to over do it until I get them all resolved.  Of course, that requires actually GOING to the doctor...

At this point, we start to climb....up and up and up.  The trail we were supposed to be one was going to take us around a lake and around almost the perimeter of the park.  Where's the lake?  Where's the trail?  What's the white blazes and why are we seeing signs for shelters?

Once we crest, I have signal and realize that we're no where near the trail we were supposed to actually hike.  *snort*  Go figure!  I figure out, using Trimble Outdoors, that if we walk on this trail, then cut right, we can get to the loop we were looking for.  So we continue.  And up we go...some more.  At some point, I will NOT be heaving when we get to the top of an incline.  I seriously need to work on my lung capacity.  *sigh*


And now my feet are starting to kill me.  I finally had to stop and we decide, well, it's been 3 miles and we wanted to do a 6 mile hike today.  We have no clue where the trail is or that we're even on the right trail, so we begin the decent back the way we came.  At this point, I'm almost convinced that I need to ditch the initial insoles I have for my "issue" and just continue with lifting of the big toe so that it supports the weight it's supposed to.  At this point, I'm baffled and getting tired of it...  SOMETHING'S gotta give...

I'm dying by the time we get back to the car.  I didn't have my brace as it was supposed to be a "moderate" hike and I forgot to put it on when I got dressed.  So, now my knee is killing me and my hip is starting to hurt.  So, I'm going downhill quickly and just can't wait to get back to the car.  How much longer?  1 mile.  How much longer?  Half a mile.  How much longer?  We should be there.  Where's the car??  I'm tired and want to go home!!  YES!  *happy dancing*  FINALLY!  There's the car!

Now we get to drive BACK on that road that is wide enough for only one car.  And wouldn't you know...TWO other cars were headed our way on the way out of the park.  Doesn't that figure?

It's interesting to note that the directions back home were different than the ones we followed to get there.  On the way home, we pass almost all of the other parking areas that made much more sense than the ones we followed.  I should have really made note of the other parking areas and where they were located so we could actually hit the right trail next time.  There was a group of Koreans that passed us and we passed them on the way home.  Next time, I think we're going to find the lake and park there to hit the right trail!