Sand Caves and White Rocks

So our spring break vacation continues and today’s adventure takes us to my favorite hiking destination, the Sand Cave and White Rocks! I have been coming here for years now but have missed out the last couple of years. I told Andrea that I wanted to make another trip here and she agreed without any hesitation. We asked grandpa to watch Aurelia since it is close to a ten mile hike without a strong cell phone signal. One day she will make this trek with us. We got an early start so we could make it to parking in between 8-9 am. The trail begins in Ewing Va at the Thomas Walker Civic Park trailhead, and that’s where this story begins.

The parking area for Civic Park has a dozen parking spaces, vault toilets and a picnic shelter. The trail begins right past the shelter. After about a half a mile we merged into the Ewing Trail and followed it left up the hill. The trail itself is well maintained, and is mostly dirt, gravel and rocks. There is plenty of opportunities for photographs, whether it is the flowers, the wildlife, or mushrooms growing on trees. Pay attention to your surroundings as this area is known to have bears. We have not seen any personally, but have come across a couple that warned us they saw one.

You are going to keep heading up the mountain along the switchbacks and spring crossings. You will have pretty views as you climb higher and higher and eventually will come to the White Rock spur trail around the 2.3 mile mark. You can take that and go straight to the overlook, but in my experience it is easier to continue on to the cave first. After continuing up the trail for another mile or so, we made it to the top of the ridge and begin to descend down. The air was a bit crisper and snow still laid on the ground beneath us. We were getting close.

We continue along the trail until we come to the Ridge Trail crossing. One way, the Hensley Settlement, hmm that sounds interesting, the other way, Sand Cave .4, WOOHOO! I think the sight of less than a half of a mile to go energized our steps as our pace picked up. A word of advice, if there is ice on the trail, please use caution, it is very slippery. We cut the .4 to .2 and that’s where you break left off of Ridge Trail and make your descent to the cave. There are a couple ways to get to the cave but I prefer to go all the way down to the water, and go right. That will put you at the waterfall and the opening of the cave. Depending on how much rain the area has had depends on if the fall is a trickle or if it is running.

As you get closer and you look up to see what’s in front of you, don’t be surprised if you say to yourself, Wow! I have been to this location at least 10 times and every single time I get there I’m in awe of how amazing it is. We started making our way up to the very back of the cave which I highly recommend because you get an awesome perspective of your surroundings. Once we make it to the very back we sit down, take a break, snap some pics and put the drone in the air. Unfortunately, because you’re so far back into the cave, the GPS for the drone was sending all kinds of crazy signals and I couldn’t get it to fly like I was hoping to. So I captured a couple photos and called it a day.

After taking in the wonder of the sand caves, we headed back to the main trail and made our way to the White Rocks. It is a nice natural climb up the the rocks until you reach the point where you have to “rock” climb in between some massive boulders. Once you make your way to the top the skies open up and you can see for miles! It is quite breathtaking and never gets old. This presented another opportunity to fly my drone and the GPS signal was strong. I flew around for a few minutes and grabbed a couple pictures and videos. Afterwards it was time to make our way back to the car, we are excited to get home to our little girl. Overall the hike ended up being 9.17 miles in 4 hours and 53 minutes, not too bad I’d say.

I have been excited to write about this place for a very long time. It is one of, if not the most favorite place for me to hike. If fact, I love the place so much, it is where I proposed a few years ago. Thank you for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed and maybe one day you will find yourself going there. Feel free to drop a comment and don’t forget to subscribe to see what happens next. Till then, Captain out…