May 21, 2008
Here’s a Reason to go to Prince William Forest Park
Every time we go to Quantico National Cemetery to visit Dad’s grave we pass by the entrance to Prince William Forest Park. It’s a national park with a visitor center and a muffin stamp, but personally I’ve never felt a compelling reason to go there. If you have to do something there to earn the muffin stamp, what is there to do? I have always felt like it was sort of a nature trail park.
(Not so! They have a large concentration of CCC cabins that were originally built to house underprivileged kids from D.C. and Virginia during summer camps, but were used during WWII to train intelligence operatives, placing them on the National Historic Register. You can rent these cabins for camping! You can bike or hike to the remains of a pyrite mine; enjoy bird watching; go fishing; go on that nature walk or even get a backcountry permit to camp at a primitive campsite.)
Well, what else? On May 31st and June 1st, 2008, they are having 1930s Heritage Days to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal. They are going to have Great Depression era music, crafts and exhibits. Some of them sound really interesting, like a blacksmith demonstrating 1930s era blacksmithing, restoration of a one of the Civilian Conservation Corps cabins that are on site, hand-hewn logmaking, a general store selling Depression theme-related items, an exhibit of 1930s radios, antique cars, and more.
It sounds really unique and you have to wonder when such an event is going to happen again. If it is successful, maybe they will make an effort to hold it every year.
I wish I was there to check it out, but now I also wish I was back in the D.C. area so that I could spend the day in Prince William Forest Park. It sounds underrated and overlooked!
Muffin Quest 
Eric said,
May 23, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Yeah, we had the same reaction at first–not being sure what would be there that would be worthy. But we checked it out in 2006 (I think it was), and PWFP’s really quite excellent. We should have stuck by the Muffin Stamp Prime Directive: “There’s a REASON they put a National Park there!”
Paul Heigl said,
February 3, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Our company produces DVD-based educational programs on various science topics for students in grades 4-9. You can see our work at http://www.freshscience.com. We’re in the midst of producing a unit on Ecology. As such, we would like to include an image from your website. The image will help illustrate a section covering geographic features.
This leads to my inquiry with you. I am writing to ask permission to include the image on our educational DVD. The image is found here: https://muffinquest.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/20070817161136.jpg.
If you are willing to let us include the image, we should be able to download it.
We would, of course, be happy to credit you on the DVD and in the printed teacher guide.
I hope I have given you sufficient information on which to fulfill our request. If not, please do not hesitate to e-mail me or give me a call at 770-521-8980.
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Paul Heigl
paul@scratchcat.com
Mike Mitchell said,
February 9, 2009 at 12:11 am
Paul,
I totally took the picture in question from the photo gallery on the Prince William Forest Park website.
At http://www.nps.gov/prwi/ you will see along the left column a link to “photos & multimedia”. From there, I chose the “Photo Gallery” and that beautiful picture of the bridge is in the “Scenic Shots” album. It has no photo credit that I am aware of.
The Prince William Forest Park site has a “contact us” link with postal, phone and email contact information.
Mike.