Shared by Nancy Hayes, as Guest Blogger.
Another delightful post from the Hayes family as they work on their goal to visit all of our Virginia State Parks. The next installment in this great series by a Park Visitor. This trip is to False Cape State Park.
False Cape is known as one of the least visited parks in the state of Virginia. Let’s just say I now know why and it is a shame, you cannot drive to this park. You must park at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and hike, bike, boat, or ride the Tram (summer) or Terra Gator (winter) approximately 3 miles to get into the park. With three small kids, we decided to ride the Tram in. The Tram leaves at 9 in the morning and returns by 1 in the afternoon. It was a bit expensive ($28 for 2 adults and 2 kids) and I was hesitant at first to spend the money, but after the ride I was so glad we did.
The ride in was beautiful. The driver stopped to let us take pictures of any random animals we spotted. The driver was also a wealth of knowledge about the park and local history. The first stop on the tram was the visitor center. At the center you had a choice to continue on the tram up to the Wash Woods church and cemetery or go off on your own for a couple of hours. At first we planned to go off on our own. Yet as we stopped and found out the 75th anniversary cache was close by we decided to let daddy do a quick cache and grab and continue on the tram.
Daddy decided to ask one of the volunteers if they had any additional clues for the cache since he had only 15 minutes to find it before the tram left. The volunteer smiled and said, "My husband has been looking for that for days, here take him with you." Next I knew one park volunteer and my husband were darting off into the woods with GPS in hand. I was a little worried daddy would not return in time, but the driver assured me we could stop and pick him up since the cache was along the way. So at the departure time, we all loaded into the tram and headed down the trail. Near the cache she stopped and honked the horn and out came to victorious gentlemen.
We then continue on the tour. We stopped at the dock near the ranger’s house to look at the osprey nests and I worried that I would have to go swimming as my children leaned dangerously over the edge, poking at the water. After that we reach a small trail off into the woods. As we followed our fearless guide she explained about the animal tracks in the sand as we all tried to take pictures. My kids adored it as they made their own tracks for others to find. She stopped multiple times to show us plants that the early settlers used to survive like wild grapes, and the mitten tree. I have to say she was great with the kids, looking for stories and showing them trees that kept them engaged and happily asking random kids questions the whole time.
We finally reach the church site. All that was left of the church was its steeple since it was made of teak wood found from ship wrecks along the shore. She told us of the history of the settlement there and some stories of the people they had founded it. Finally it was time to get back on the tram. As we left we discovered we were running early. Since some of the other riders wanted to walk along the beach she dropped them off along the way and gave them shortcut directions so they could visit the beach and be back in time. We decided since we had managed to keep our kids relatively dry so far we would forgo the beach and head back to the visitor center.
Once there, the geo-caching volunteer grabbed my husband and they went off to locate a couple other caches in the area. The volunteer in the center found some books and settled the littlest one in the lobby area and let her look through the books. The older two met some new friends and played outside for the remainder of the time.
Once we reached the car I realized something, the entire time we were there I did not have fighting, whining, or fussy kids. They had a ball without a playground as bribery and were happily talking as we reach the car. The one thing I noticed was the volunteers. If I had a company these are the people I would want to work for me. They were engaging, friendly, and excited about what they were doing. They knew the history of the park, were willing to go beyond their job description, and I never once heard anyone say that is not my job. I think the volunteers were the best part of the day.
I strongly recommend to anyone
visit this park. It was one of the best. As we left the least visited park we headed for the most visited park (
First Landing) and continued our park adventure.
