30. Pohick Bay Regional Park

Pohick Bay Regional Park includes 8.5 miles of trails on 1,002 acres on northeast side the Mason Neck peninsula. The vicinity of Pohick Bay Regional Park has a high probability of providing habitat for at least three threatened/endangered species: the bald eagle, an orchid called the small whorled pogonia, and the wood turtle. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated Pohick Bay and Gunston Cove as a bald eagle roosting/perching/shoreline use area, where there are an abundance of water fowl, including ospreys and great blue herons. There is a connecting trail to the Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area that crosses Gunston Road by the firehouse. You can park on an access road there to access the trail system.

Unfortunately the trails and the back portions of the park they cross are shoddily maintained (in stark contrast to the adjacent BLM-owned Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area, which has the best built and maintained trail system I've found in the D.C. area). The trails wind through some beautiful woods and especially the red and blue trails, along the shore of Pohick Bay, but they are often poorly routed, marked, and maintained, so be sure to bring the map (link below) with you to avoid getting confused and losing the trail. Horseback riders make a boggy mess out of some trail sections.

(A tip for finding your way along the Red Cut Back Trail: the middle portion of the trail is unmarked -- the trail always follows a stream, so stay parallel to, and just above, the stream -- do not cross it -- there is one place near the head of the stream where the trail clearly crosses it in a well-marked section. In the unmarked center section of the trail, it climbs to the top of the ridge that it parallels at one point, using switchbacks on the north approach, closer to the bay.)

Trail map