Took a beautiful walk with friends along the Colvin Run Trail, starting from Colvin Mill, at 10017 Colvin Run Road in Great Falls, Virginia. The mill is nicely situated as a trailhead, providing plenty of free parking, restrooms and drinking fountains and, during operating hours, a general store and tours of the historic mill itself. (You can even buy several kinds of flour ground in the mill if you’re handy enough in the kitchen to do anything with it.)

 From the mill you have two options for a hike, both pleasant:

1. You can walk east, along Difficult Run Trail, which meanders alongside the stream of the same name until it empties into the Potomac River about 4 miles to the east, or
2. You can walk west along Colvin Run Trail, which follows Colvin Run upstream almost 2 miles to Lake Fairfax Park

We took the second option today, and added a walk around Lake Fairfax before returning to Colvin Mill, for a total walk of about 5.5 miles. (You can add a lot more if you like, since Lake Fairfax Park is laced with trails. But you’ll need a copy of the Fairfax County Parks Authority trail map available in pdf format here. I made the mistake of going without during a Wednesday prehike and wound up walking 9 miles!)

So much for the “Colvin,” but what about the “Kits?” Fox kits, surely a pair of litter mates, were racing around playing in my backyard as I was getting ready to leave. I could only catch one for a few seconds, before the other leaped on it and they became tangled in a reddish blur before dashing off into the woods out of sight!