Meadowood Recreation Area

Well yesterday I was going to come into work late because my little one had his annual physical scheduled for 9am. We finished up just after 10:30am and he assumed that I had taken the entire day off & that we were going to "hang out" together for the rest of the day. When I explained that I was going to the office late he was a bit bummed, so I decided to just take the rest of the day off.  We went to check out Meadowood Recreation Area. It's a local park that has some hiking trails & a mountain biking trail.

Unlike the C&O Towpath or Burke Lake Park, which both have a fairly wide path allowing you to ride side by side, this trail was all single track with some sharp turns & small uphill climbs.

The nice thing is that it is all shady so even though the temps were in the mid to high 80's, we were relatively cool. The path is marked well, although we got lost sort of (more about that later).

 After about a mile on the path we came upon a picnic bench. We stopped and took a seat and drank some water. I took my camera out of the back pack and snapped some pictures of his bike.

We resumed our ride and as we got further down the path it started to get more arduous. "J"  had a couple falls on the bike due  a combination of some loose gravel & coming up too fast on a couple twisty turns. He was starting to complain & began asking if we were almost done. I kept telling him that he was doing fantastic and to just brush it off & get back on. Not sure if my "encouragement" helped or if it annoyed him even more. Thankfully all of that complaining was quickly forgotton when we came across some big mushrooms & a turtle that happen to be crossing the path.

J was quick to jump off the bike to go check out this little turtle. Originally, I was taking pictures of him with my cell phone & they were not as clear as I would have liked so I pulled out my "normal" camera. As soon as I got down to take some close up pictures of him, he started to practically run into the leaves. I am am assuming the lens must has scared him off because it sort of looks like a gigantic eyeball.

We came to another sign post indicating "Yard Sale" trail that was .67 miles. We decided to check it out & it was so much fun! It was more like a challenge trail with jumps & various other obstacles. He was intimidated at first but once he got over the first jump, he was hooked.

I was able to catch this shot with my cell phone of me getting ready to go down a mini hill & the other picture (which is quite blurry) of him doing the part he enjoyed the most.

J's favorite part, a long series of jumps.

After doing the Yard Sale trail, we ended up on the same trail we were previously on except in a different location & because I failed to bring a map with me we ended up going back the same way we came in. We realized this after about 1/2 a mile once we saw some familiar things we had already passed. J was really tired by this point and was telling me he was worried we were lost in the woods. We stopped and ate the sandwiches we had packed earlier. 

We continued slowly on the path & happen to see a swarm of bees flying around really close to the ground. We noticed they must have built an underground nest because dozens of them were going in and out of this small hole in the ground. They didn't bother us & they seemed to be preoccupied so I tried to get a close up shot of them going in and out of their hole

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Luckily for us, there was another biker that so happened to be on the path. He said we had about 1.5 miles more to go. We eventually got to the parking lot, packed up our bikes & headed home. Overall I really liked the trail. Next time I plan to start the trail going in the opposite direction since we never made it around the other side.