DC Day Tripping: Great Falls and Manassas Battlefield Park

After the somewhat disappointing visit to Antietam, we decided to pay another visit to our favorite battlefield park. With rolling acres as far as the eye can see and relatively few roads crossing the park Manassas is in my opinion a lot nicer ... although I will say the visitors center doesn't come close to the one in Antietam.

Anyway, first we make a quick stop at Great Falls ... another National Park. It's a favorite with local rock climbing enthusiasts.

You won't see me scaling those rocks anytime soon, but I can't resist this fallen tree leading to a small island in the river.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I managed to trip over my own feet on a graded section of the gravel trail to the first overlook and take a chunk out of my knee. Didn't look too bad, but I'd hate to make someone queasy, hence the picture of it bandaged up.

At least the view is worth it!

We make it to viewpoint three without getting my knee looked at, but at this point I'm starting to scare small children so we head to the visitors center to get it cleaned. The woman at the front desk takes one look at my knee and decides that the first aid kit is not going to cut it and she calls a park ranger to take care of me. Can't remember her name, but she told me all kinds of good stories about people doing stupid stuff haha!

I'm all bandaged up so we get back on the road to Manassas.

I love this place!

We'd love to watch a civil war reenactment sometime, but somehow we always miss them. They actually had one the day we were there, but it was long over by the time we got there ... we did see these people in period clothing hanging out. Pretty neat!