Day Hike, Doves Landing Park, Manassas, VA

This 3.5 mile sort of a loop hike took place on Sunday, February 9, 2025. It was sponsored by the

Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition

and was led by Neil Nelson.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with Doves Landing Park. I’ve hiked there numerous times. I’ve gotten lost there numerous times. I have helped blaze the northern and western trails and I’ve done chainsaw work in this park. It’s a beautiful park and from what I have read, there are some exciting future plans for it.

So I showed up at the Doves Landing Park Parking lot at around 12:45 PM. Hike leader Neil Nelson and the other 15 hikers showed up shortly afterwards. Neil gave one of his excellent talks on this park. We then started this hike.

It was another beautiful day. Temps were in the high 40’s, low 50’s and it was sunny. The trail was a bit muddy but was well groomed and easy to hike. We hiked primarilly on the orange trail today. There was a good mix of hikers on this hike. People from their 20’s to their 70’s (like me). We saw where the eastern terminus of the future 17 mile Broad Run Trail was going to be, then the confluence of Broad Run and and Cedar Run. These two streams then became the Occoquan River. We had hiked about a mile at this point.

I met a very interesting person on this hike. His name was David Brickley, He was a former Virginia State Representative and he owns a trail in Central Virginia. It is the 16 mile

Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail

You can read all about this trail at the above web site. I had driven by one of the trailheads about 5 years ago while on the way to explore the nearby Caledon State Park, VA. And my son John has run races on this trail. I’ll have to get over there some day to explore this interesting trail.

Next we walked along the Occoquan River for about a mile. This section was very close to the river and has flooded in the past. It is my opinion that it should probably be moved at least 50 feet away from the river. The blazing at this point was not as good as the previous mile. We then made it to a power line right of way. We took a left and walked about a quarter mile along it.

At the next intersection we could have turned left to return to the parking lot. We turned right to explore a new section of this park that had been recently aquired. The turn blaze at this intersection was not correct. We then hiked to a point further east on the Occoquan River . Neil pointed out where we hiked to last year on the other side of the river at the

Preserve at Long Branch.

I read somewhere online that there are possible future plans to install a hiker/biker bridge from this spot across the Occoquan to connect to the Preserve at Long Branch. I’m glad that Neil was leading this hike as I surely would have gotten lost within this new section. There were a number of trails in this new section. All were unblazed. We were at the 3 mile point now.

Finally, we returned to the Orange Trail and hiked the remaining .5 miles back to the parking lot. I said thanks to Neil, good bye to my fellow hikers and went home. This was a nice hike. It was nice to have been hiking in Dove’s Landing Park again. I’m just glad that it was a guided hike this time.