Hiking at Sky Meadows State Park

Thankfully, there are a bunch of day-hike options within a couple hours of Northern Virginia – probably enough where you could do one hike per weekend for a year and not repeat – awesome!  On Memorial Day weekend Becca and I decided to try a new (to us) hike and headed out to the trail network at Sky Meadows State Park for some adventure, sunshine, and to break the monotony of hitting the gym!

Sky Meadows State Park is located in Delaplane, Virginia and features 19 miles of hiking trails.  Overwhelmed with options within 1.5 hours of home in Fairfax, VA, we chose Sky Meadows for a couple reasons:

• Proximity – only 45 minutes away!
• Difficulty – we weren’t looking for anything really difficult over the holiday weekend
• Views – gets 5 starts on hiking upward for views – not too shabby

Since we visited on a Holiday weekend, there were plenty of similarly-minded folks there, but I wouldn’t have considered the park crowded.  The weather was on the warm side in the mid 80’s, but not too stifling to prevent us from logging about 7 miles on the hiking trails and soaking in the views!

Enjoying the rolling Piedmont Virginia landscape from the trail

Some of the more memorable parts of the day-jaunt included the fairly grueling initial section of the hike – which includes some pretty good elevation gain through a cow pasture (didn’t smell too good…).  Thankfully the views at the top were great!

We shared the trail with some 4-legged future cheeseburgers on the initial ascent

We also came across a couple of snakes…when we first arrived at the park we settled under a tree to eat lunch.  I’ll be darned if 2 adult black snakes didn’t drop out of the tree only about 10 feet from us!  Yikes!  We also saw a third black snake out on the hiking trail while crossing a meadow.

Yes, those are the 2 snakes that fell out of a tree 10 feet from where we were sitting…

Overall, the hike was a good mix of exercise and leisure with views that lived up to expectations.  If you’re looking for a good 1/2 day outdoor fix, Sky Meadows is a great option to check out in the DC area.  Admission is $5 per vehicle and park maps are available onsite.