West Neck Creek Natural Area
I guess the best way to describe the West Neck Creek Natural Area in Virginia Beach, is raw. There is a relatively short paved path, if I had to guess I would say it is somewhere between a quarter and half mile long, terminating at a bridge. There are a couple of more primitive trails that are kind of hard to find and follow, these trails are marked by blue paint on trees along the paved path. The paint markings continue along the trail as well as weed stop cloth, but that was a little hard to follow because of all the leaf litter on the ground. You will have to climb over some downed trees, and such, but nothing that difficult.
To try the trails I would recommend that when you enter the trail from the parking lot, take the first left, keep an eye to the trees on the left, after about 100 yards or less you’ll see 2 trees with 3 blue dots, the is the beginning of one of the trails, the trail will eventually meet back up to the paved trail, near the bridge. Go left on the paved trail, and cross the bridge, I ran in to a bit of mud after a bit, but it looked like you could go further. if you go right from the bridge, you’ll end up at a house (City?), you can then make a right here and up the gravel road and loop back to the parking lot.
This is a nice place to spend an hour or so with the family.
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- Entrance
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- Drainage
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- Bridge
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- Path
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- Sun through trees
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- Sun shining through the trees
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- Early Green
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- Bridge
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- Paved Path
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- Tree in a tree
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- Leaning trees
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- Trailhead
[googleMap]480|400|14|0|3|36.749003 -76.053607|West Neck Creek Natural Area[/googleMap]
If you plan on visiting, the entrance is a little deceptive, you want to park in the paved parking lot, the straight gravel road that appears to be the entrance is actually a maintenance road.
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