Hemlock Overlook Regional Park — Attraction in Manassas Park

What a beautiful treat! This readily accessible park has a network of fairly well maintained hiking trails to enjoy. Ranging in difficulty from easy to moderate, they allow users to spend just 15 minutes in nature or several hours, depending on what combination of trail legs you take.

What I noticed was how quickly my husband and I were transported to a feeling of being surrounded by forest. A variety of foliage and trees fill the park, with lots of oak and beech. The beech, with their white bark, were particularly beautiful, providing a contrast in texture and color to the more typical woods found in much of northern Virginia.

One improvement the park could use is better trail signage. The free version of the AllTrails app (Android, for us) helped quite a bit, as we could follow along with the GPS-guided map as we progressed through the park. (Tip! Take screenshots of the trail network on the app before you enter the park, as you'll lose the signal at various places. Otherwise, you have to have the paid version of the app to download the full trail map in advance. Sneaky, hee hee.)

We wanted to reach the stream, the lazily flowing Bull Run, and the app really helped us decide which way to turn at the trail intersections. There are some pretty dated trail maps on signboards at the entrance to the park, but once you're in the park, it would be hard to tell exactly where you were. Not impossible! Just more challenging.

There are no paper maps at the entrance and there's really minimal signage along the trails. So definitely room for improvement there. Parks always suffer from budget constraints, so it's easy to understand why the regional authority can't cover it all.

Parking was available in two different lots, rather close together at the entrance. But you can join the trail network at two different places from those lots, so choose the one that suits you best. Or the one with available spots! We had no problem parking when we arrived on a gorgeous summer weekend soon after lunch. But when we returned a couple of hours later in the afternoon, the lots were pretty packed.

By the way, both lots are right next to a local winery with picnic tables, in case you want to have a Walk & Wine experience. Choose which one to do...

I go here all the time. I am the wacko stumbling around wearing a weight vest and carrying more poundage in my ruck sack. I love the trails, I love the scenery, and I really love the workout. However, tgere are some things I don't love, and here they go: Parking here on the weekends is next to impossible due to the winery. Seriously, if it is a nice day and you aren't there before 10 am, you might as well forget it. If you are an automotive contortionist and you drive a Yugo, you may be able to squeeze into some miniscule sliver of ground, but if you are even slightly off you will become fodder for the police who show up on the reg to issue parking tickets. To further fuel your ire, there are spaces available at Adventure Links, the COVID-19 vacant outdoor camp, but the hippie kids that work there , in a very non-hippie move, will charge you $15 to park there- not kind- Jerry and Phish would be most displeased. The second thing is more irksome because it puts people's callousness into plain sight. Despite signage clearly stating that dogs need to be on leashes, many people just let theirs run free after descending a few feet down the path! Newsflash- it's great that you love your dog, BUT I DON'T LOVE YOUR DOG. In fact, I don't even like it in a general sense, but I ESPECIALLY don't like it when it annoys me as I am trying hard to get a workout in. There are many dog parks around, but people are seemingly too selfish to take their dog there because they can't enjoy themselves too. One day I was deep down in the woods and my heart rate was really humming- it was 190 or so- and...

Beautiful, huge park but somewhat difficult to navigate to and within - see below. Great views along the river. Some interesting rocks near parts of the trails. Tons of nice big trees. Interesting stone ruins at the southeast end. Numerous geocaches, some in much better shape than others.

Parking sketchy/difficult to find and might be on a narrow, unpaved road with huge potholes or with trees in the driving area, with turning around very difficult. Trails might be easygoing, then suddenly up and over rocks. Some trails are wide and clear; some, deep ruts. Some very dry; a few bits got a little muddy even after dry spell. No easy way to loop around and get back to parking without doing a lot of backtracking or walking a long distance on a narrow road or taking a trail that appears on the map but from the road is labeled as being on private property with no trespassing signs everywhere. These trail/parking issues are a huge negative and I almost went down to three stars just for this. No apparent facilities, at least not where I parked (ENE part of park).

Well worth the visit, and I'll be back for sure, but you need to plan ahead, bring snacks and drinks, even if you don't think you'll be there for long, bring a walking stick, and think very hard on where you're going and just how long it's going to take you to get back to that vehicle. Could be a very long walk with no shortcuts other than going up and...