Hiking Amelia Wildlife Management Area

last weekend, beardo and i decided to take a hike. we weren't sure where to go, so i bought a book called 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Richmond. this book is a pretty good resource and gives a lot of information about different hiking locations within 60 miles of the richmond metro area. after looking over a bunch of the hikes, i decided we should hike Amelia Wildlife Management Area. it was about a 45 minute drive from our apartments. in the book, it says that the hike should be about 6 miles and take roughly 3 hours or so. beardo and i got to the wma around 10 am last saturday, parked the car and started down the trail. we stocked up on water, beef jerky and trail mix bars. i wanted to bring the book with us, but beardo's "better" judgement prevailed and we left the book in the truck...more on this later.

we started down the trail which wound through the woods a little bit and then cut in toward the lake. we happened upon this freshwater pool, which i thought was photo-worthy.



the trail took us down to the lake and we were hiking it's edge. we finally came to a split. going right would have kept us along the lake. going left went up a hill and veered to the left a bit. again, going on beardo's "better" judgement, we went to the left. along the trail we stopped for a bit to have a drink of water. while waiting, we heard a big crash in the woods. beardo claims that he saw something snap a tree branch in half. could it have been the infamous and mysterious sasquatch? the world may never know. although, upon hiking a few hundred more feet, we happened along what appeared to be yeti scat. i had no bag or container to collect the sample, but i did secure some photo evidence. you be the judge.

needless to say, the trail we (or beardo rather) decided to take was a dead-end. we had to turn back and take the other spur. at this time, beardo also found about 4 or 5 ticks on his person. we both did an inspection (i had one) and then continued on.

it was about this time that a muscle on my inner thigh began to give me trouble. i was limping through the foot high grass along the lake. i should also note that there were no access point to fish from the shore here. pretty much the entire lake had scrub brush along the shore. the picture below is of the earthen dam on the lakes north shore.


when we reached the earthen dam, about halfway through our hike, i snapped a picture of the lake. there were probably 10 or so people (probably more) on boats fishing.


while snapping pictures, i decided to get a candid shot of beardo. can anyone please tell me what he is doing with his finger???


on the other side of the dam was a gravel road that went up a hill. at this point, my muscle was killing me so bad that i had to walk up the hill backwards. at the top of the hill and out the road a little bit there is a shooting range. thankfully it was not in use this day. i'm not sure i would have liked to have met the yokels that decided it necessary to do the following:


we stopped at the shooting range (it was around noon at this point) and had some jerky and trail mix bars for lunch. we sat on a picnic table and watch the bore bees buzzing around the shooting range. we continued down the gravel road until we reached the eastern trails of the lake. Amelia WMA used to be a working farm, but is now owned by the VA Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries. we came upon some old buildings that were used as a milking station. we kept going along the road and came upon some other trails and again, i deferred to beardo's "better" judgement. eventually we were walking along and i didn't hear beardo walking behind me anymore. i stopped and turned, but was given the command to turn around and not look. after taking a leak, i decided to see what the hell was going on. this is what i saw:


apparently beardo felt a tick bite him on his leg. upon pulling his pants down, he discovered that one had taken up residence on his inner thigh. i should note at this point that beardo HATES ticks. i should also note that he found about 25-30 ticks on his person during the whole hike compared to only around 10 or so for myself. after carrying on like a little girl for a while with me asking him if he wanted ME to pull it out, i snapped this other picture. you be the judge of what is going on.


eventually, he got the tick out and we continued on. the trail that beardo decided to take came to a dead end at a marsh, so we backtracked and took the trail that i wanted to take and eventually ended up back at the milking barn. it was here that we came across a couple that was hiking who told us which trail we needed to take to get back to the truck and supplied us with a map (hmm...there was a map in the book. where was the book? oh yeah, beardo said we didn't need it). we finally made it back to the car after hiking down a road for 3/4 of a mile in the open sun. it was now about 2:30 and we ended our hike after hiking 2-3 miles extra. we are already making plans for our next hike...i'll keep you posted on any shenanigans.