Fairy Stone State Park

For Mother's Day I usually request a hiking trip, and this year was no different.  We flipped through a couple of hiking in Virginia type books and finally decided to head to Fairy Stone State Park.  It's crazy that we'd never been before, since it's only an hour away.

 We certainly had fun hiking the Lakeshore Trail to the dam.  The boys had a lot of fun with a millipede they found.

Our youngest?  He has decided he prefers to ride than walk, although he still apparently needs a hiking stick even when refusing to hike.

Beautiful lake view:

At least the youngest was willing to get down for photo ops:

A bit of a grade...

Would you look at this tree?  It seems my old neighbor, JP, has been defacing trees out at Fairy Stone Park.  Do you see the big JP on the upper left? 

We also found a few trees defaced by a very busy beaver!

Made it to the dam!

We finally gave up and put Cort in the backpack.  But please note that he still has his hiking stick.  He's still hiking, you know, even if he's refusing to walk.

Once again, he gets down for pictures!

After our hike we drove to the spot where you look for fairy stones.  Little stone crosses, left by the fairies, are mementos of their inhabitation of this enchanted spot.  (Okay, technically they were formed by a combination of heat and pressure during the folding and crumpling of the earth's crust in the formation of the Appalachian Mountains.  However, I personally prefer the romping, playing fairies explanation). 

Reid and Cort decide to climb on a log instead of hunting for fairy stones.

They are tricky to find, and we did hunt for a while, but I've got a couple of tips for you if you go.  Walk far back - further than you think most people would.  Search along the edges, where the water has washed up in the past.  Look under leaf debrise.  We found a small handful all together.  Here's one of the best we discovered - this one, a St. Andrews version, was found by Paul:

Ever been hunting for fairy stones, readers?