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This roughly one mile day hike/tour took place on Tuesday, November 18, 2025. There were roughly a dozen hikers present including me. It was sponsored by
and was led by Michelle and Charlie House.
This hike turned out a lot different than I thought that it would be. First off, I was late leaving the house. I was sure that I would not make this hike in time. I left Manassas, VA around 6:30 AM, stopped in Front Royal, VA to gas up and get some breakfast at Roy Rogers around 8:00 AM. I was using the Waze app on my phone. When I got close to where I thought that I had to go Waze took me past Turkey Run Rd and told me to turn left onto Star Tannery RD, I was confused. Then, after a few turns I saw a sign that said “Truckers: Do Not Use GPS to navigate this area.” Then I got scared. I went a bit further until the street names did not match what Waze said. So I turned around and was starting for home.
I found a place to pull over and got out my Garmin GPS. It is a true GPS unlike Waze, which relies on cell service, which evidently was not present in this area. So the Garmin took me back out to Wardensville TPKE US48/VA55. I turned right, went about 3 miles, turned right onto Turkey Run RD, drove about 5 miles and I made it to the address for the Retreat. Thanks, John C.
So I arrived right on time. Greg McCarley was there telling us where to park. Greg is co-owner of nearby New Star Market and is the onsight representative for this project in it’s early stages. Temps were right around freezing when we started this one. There were about a dozen hikers present. Next to arrive was Mike Marburg. I’m not sure what his title was but he seems to be the person in charge of the project. There was another lady present that was involved in marketing. I can’t recall her name but it might have been Gina.
Mike M gave a short spiel about this project. He was passionate about it and spoke with a lot of enthusiasm and pride. He was a good speaker. He looked each of us right in the eye as he spoke of the various aspects of this project. I thought that we would be touring buildings here. Nope, we would be walking along rough trails and former logging roads and Mike M would explain various features about the project as we encountered them.
There were some hills to climb. And we ended up making about seven or eight stops so that Mike M would explain which building would go where as well as giving us a short history about the property’s past. This property was 940 acres. It would have taken us days to hike it all. Instead, we stopped at various areas in the woods and Mike M would talk about the various buildings that were planned for the facility as if they were already in place. Mike M was a very good pitchman. I only took one image because the rest of the stops looked the same as the last.
After about 1.5 hours and having made 7 or 8 stops, we hiked back to our vehicles. There were no buildings present during our tour. The closest thing we saw to a building was what looked like a swimming pool from far away. As we got closer it was still confusing as to what it was. Mike M said that it was a mockup of two adjoining hotel rooms that could be moved around for planning purposes. The figure $200 million was mentioned as the cost of the project. When asked how much it would cost to stay at this future resort. no figures were given.
This was a very interesting day. I got to visit an area that I had never been to before. I met a few new people in the hiking group as well as Mike M, Greg and Gina. So it was a great day. And I may be leading a few hikes for this group next year. Stay tuned.
Mike C
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