Hemlock Overlook Regional 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 first wisely!