Week 16 – my town

I had a lot of fun capturing “my town” this week, and I want to show you what I chose to show off.  And this prompt gave me a fun day with my youngest, where we did things we usually don’t do.   I also took three of my kids out after dinner one night for a little adventure to get a few photos.  They loved that!

To get it started, here’s a photo of what I consider to be the center of Ashburn, VA. And it’s not just me, I’m pretty sure that Google Maps uses this as the center too. 🙂 By the way, this place has awesome BBQ!

I wanted to capture a variety of different aspects of where I live. And in doing so, I also discovered something that I didn’t know was even there. But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. I have a lot of photos to share, so hopefully you have good bandwidth to load it all. I’m going to share them chronologically, in the order that I visited each place. I hope you enjoy this little peek at my corner of the world.

First stop, the barn by Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm. Clyde’s is a restaurant a few miles from our house and there are walking paths to a working farm behind the many trees to the right of the establishment. I love going to this barn to take pictures, I think it’s so pretty.

Jack is very excited to be checking it out, he ran the whole way on the path, he didn’t want to walk with me.

From there, we went to one of the many playgrounds my town has to offer. This one is probably the neatest one, although parking can be a challenge. It’s Ashburn Park, but it’s known as Dinosaur Park. And as you view the photos, you can see why it’s called that. It recently went through some renovations, and the signs are relatively new.

This is just one play section, there is a lot more here. I wanted to capture the dinosaurs here to show you.

I practically had to drag Jack out of the park, after letting him play for a long time. But we weren’t done our adventures, and we needed to be back home before the bus brought the older kids home. I reminded him of where we were going, but it took the threat of NOT going there to finally get him moving out of the park. 🙂 Our next stop was Zinga! Frozen Yogurt – yum!

It’s self serve, and then it’s weighed, so you pay for what you put into that cup. Jack had two flavors (triple chocolate and perfectly peppermint), along with marshmallows and gummies in his. I had three flavors – cheesecake, malted candy Easter egg, & triple chocolate plus M&Ms and crushed Oreos. Yummy!!!!

We didn’t have much time after Zinga!, but I stopped near the vet in the “old” part of town. Jack and I got out and walked around, and we discovered a little field with horses that I didn’t even know was there. I knew the vet had a horse area, but this place seemed like it was its own field associated with something else. There was a pretty white horse among the brown horses. I took a couple photos before we hustled home to beat the bus.

Two days later, I pulled over to take this photo – there’s ALWAYS construction going on. More houses being built. This looks like it’s going to be a drainage pond area for new houses that will be built here.

Thursdays my older three have religious education at St. Theresa’s, which is where we go to church. They’re always begging me to play at the playground before going home to dinner. I let them play this day, because I really wanted to photograph the big climbing web here. I’ve never seen one of these anywhere else, and my kids really love this thing.

My older daughter is standing, looking at me. My younger daughter is wearing a green dress and is just starting to climb it.

And this is the statue of St. Thérèse that sits near the church. St. Thérèse is my favorite saint, so I thought it was fitting that she is the patron saint of the only Catholic church that was in Ashburn when we moved here in 1999. We didn’t have an actual church building until 2009, so the statue and church itself are pretty new. But the school has been here for 18 years, so the parish is pretty big. I’m not sure why they chose to spell Theresa the way they did when naming the church, as Thérèse is the actual spelling of our patroness’ name.

The Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) trail runs from Shirlington to Purcellville and goes through Ashburn. The trail is almost 45 miles long, and when I do manage to find time to ride my bike, it’s where I like to go. Partlow’s Market/Carolina Brothers Pit Barbeque sits right off the trail, and it’s one of the few places where it’s easy to stop for refreshments when biking on the trail.

A view down the trail, looking east

The last photos are from the Luck Stone quarry overlook. After dinner on Friday, I drove to another part of the W&OD trail where I parked, and then walked about 1/4 mile with three of my kids to the overlook. I had to take the photos through a chain link fence, as you can see. And look how small that white truck is. That gives you an idea of how huge the quarry is.

This is just to the right of the photo above. You can see the conveyors that bring the rocks up. Pretty cool, right? My oldest has been there for a field trip, I’d love to go sometime and get the tour.

And that, my friends, is a glimpse of my town.   We have a lot of shopping strips, grocery stores, Starbucks, gas stations, fast food,  schools, office buildings, and restaurants.   I chose to highlight parts of my town that mean something to me, and are fun.  I hope you enjoyed this look into my town.

 

What would you pick from your town?  What’s your favorite part about where you live?

 

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