A visitor contributed post
After the drama of the last park and the fact everyone is still coughing from allergies we decided to take the shorter trail this time. There were only two things we wanted to do at the park for sure. 1. we had to go to fossil beach and look for fossils and 2. we were going to try our hand at geocaching.
After a short walk down a trail that had beautiful views of the Potomac we found our way to a nice little board walk with an observation tower. We climbed to the top and looked over the marsh. My husband found the beaver dam and the kids were fascinated by the reeds that were taller than mommy and daddy. After the small detour to the tower we made it to fossil beach. After watching the waves crash I was glad I brought a change of clothes per child. We walked the beach and checked all the rocks. In the end we found one rock with reanimate of snail fossilized and a bunch of rocks that had to be tossed in the ocean to see the splash. Amazingly enough no one fell in the water.
After that we had a chilly picnic by the playground. Finally we were off to find our treasure. X may mark the spot, but when your GPS batteries dies, mommy aerial map and daddy military training do come in handy. With a little effort we found the geocache and signed our name in the book. We found a traveling bug and now we have to decide do we put it in another park or go up to government island and drop it in a cache up there.
New Park Visitor Center at Westmoreland State Park
The park was nice and we drove around and saw the cabins. There visitor center is LEED certified. So any of you environmentalists would get a kick out of seeing all the neat features. The fossil beach was actually fun and my husband and I are thinking about returning later without kids to do one of their kayaking tours. The views are outstanding from just about any point in the park.
Leaving the park we decided to stop at one of the national parks, George Washington Birthplace, for our lifetime goal of visiting all the National Parks in the US. But more on that later. Definitely recommend this park. Actually have not found a park yet I do not like.
If you missed the first three parks:
Editor's note: Pictures from our files