Camping, Hiking, and Orienteering at Prince William Forest Park
Prince William Forest National Park is one of Northern Virginia's largest least crowded parks. It's large (over 15,000 acres) and rich in natural beauty. The main natural attractions are trees, creeks, and wildlife.
Camping in either tents or cabins (rustic ones!) is available in the park and is very inexpensive. If you're a tent camper, you can either drive up for car camping or hike in to a more natural campsite.
One cool activity at Prince William Forest is orienteering, which is a fancy word for hiking a course with just a compass and a map -- no trail. Orienteering is a fun activity for a small group and is a little more mentally and physically challenging than most hiking trails in the area. You can get an orienteering course at the park by stopping by the Visitor Center.
Prince William Forest is also a nice location for quiet biking, with 21 miles of roads for bikes or cars, but you can't really get here without driving. The park is a forty-five minute to who-knows-how-long trip down I-95 from DC.
(Thanks for Eric for these photos!)
Prince William Forest National Park
18100 Park Headquarters Road, Triangle, Virginia 22172 (map)
703 221 7181 | www.nps.gov/prwi
posted by Christian at 7:28 PM
2 Comments:
And it appears that they allow beer at the campsites!
Note that orienteering in Prince William Forest between now and Nov 2, 2007, will disqualify you from officially competing in the 2007 US Orienteering Championships, since that's where the Champs races will be held (and they don't want local folks to get an unfair advantage by memorizing the terrain) ... for more info on the US Champs, go to http://www.uschamps.org/
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