Days 8 - 14 Family Reunion at Westmoreland Park

●●● Westmoreland State Park

The whole reason for our amazing road trip to Virginia was to partake in a family reunion.  My three siblings and their families, plus my mother and father all flew or drove to Westmoreland State Park in Virginia.

(Note: for privacy sake, I have only included pictures of my family, but there really were 21 of us!)

I picked the park because it was close to where Dave worked.  That way, I figured he could join us on the weekends.  

Other than that, I knew little of the park; my mom had loved it when she was a child but that was quite a few decades ago!

It turned out that I guess the park had changed very little; it was still a truly wonderful park with something to do for just about everyone.  


Which was good, because we had all ages along.  The youngest being my 3 year old nephew from Montana, and the oldest being my parents!

Westmoreland Park is located on the Potomac, and in some ways, it feels more like a beach than a river.  

It is wide enough that you can just barely see across the river on a clear day; 

it is partially salty, 

and experiences tides and waves.




During the Most of my family camped, though my sister was in a pop-up trailer.  We were the only ones in tents :o)  

The boys went crabbing and fishing off the pier and caught numerous fish (none large enough to keep), but sadly no crabs. 

The boys swam in the beach-like Potomac.  The beach sign clearly indicates there are strong currents, and warns that everyone should swim at their own risk.  

The first few days we were there, the weather was warm and beautiful and the water was calm.  After seeing many others swimming in the water, we allowed the older kids to also.  

However, the last few days, the temperature cooled and the wind picked up -- and so did the waves.  At that point, no one really wanted to swim any way!

When the kids were done swimming at the beach, they could head over to the pool, which was very nice.  It had a nice tube slide for the kids, and two diving boards - which got plenty of use!

Located a short mile hike within the park was Fossil Beach.  The park provided screened boxes (and instructive classes, if you desired).  After a few hours of digging, about half of our group found a fossilized tooth.  Kyle identified his as a shark tooth and Dylan found a fossilized crocodile tooth!  Very fun!!

We were only at the park for 6 days and never were the kids bored.  There were lots of trails to explore, numerous geocaches hidden in the park, the beach, pool and more.  And if that wasn't enough, a couple of times a day, the park had a variety of ranger led activities.  We were so busy we only participated in one of them, but it was really fun!