Visiting Fairfax: Lightly Lingering

“My family has a pre-Christmas tradition involving a lot of hot chocolate in thermoses before driving around to see how dedicated the neighbors are when setting up Christmas lights.” – Old Sean

Christmas Stateside

While I have no plans for traveling this holiday season, I spent the Christmas holidays enjoying various loops around my current base.

Right now, I’m in Fairfax, Virginia, hammering away on a keyboard.  I haven’t had much time (or motivation) to explore this little pocket of the United States. But with the holidays imminent, I have more time to browse around.

Balmy North

On Christmas Eve, I heeded out on a little tour of town, visiting the last few open restaurants in my area.  

Despite a serious cold snap the previous week, the weather around Christmas had warmed up considerably.   By the time the holidays arrived, I was walking around in t-shirts and bringing water bottles on short hikes. 

I took a slow trip over to Bull Run, a regional park north of Manassas which follows the Bull Run River East towards the Potomac.  The hike was quiet, with low hills and sturdy little wooden bridges.  The trees were bare and not even birds chirped.

Afterwards, I headed into Clifton, a quaint little town with preserved buildings, a rail line cutting through and a medium-sized picturesque little church.  Apparently, the town was originally a Civil War train station which eventually grew to include a post office, hotel, homes and businesses after the station itself had closed.

The town turned out to be quite pretty in the winter, with standing nutcrackers, large Christmas trees and a man painting the town’s main street while standing outside on the sidewalk.

The Bunny Man Bridge

One of the things I truly appreciate about traveling is a local legend.  There’s a special story in this part of Virginia centered around an unassuming bridge called the Bunny Man Bridge.  This bridge is a single-car tunnel cutting through a small hill with rail tracks above.  

The Bunny Man Bridge has several stories, all of them layers of the same spooky theme.  Since it’s a local legend, there are many variations and they usually get changed as they’re passed around.

The gist is fairly consistent.

Once upon a time in Virginia, a deranged group of prisoners won free from a Virginia insane asylum, plunging into the woods and foothills to avoid recapture.  While all prisoners were apprehended and accounted for, police continued receiving reports of a murderous figure lurking near Colchester Road Bridge.

Though the police sent out squads to investigate, they were unable to find evidence of the unsavory figure.  

However, at the stroke of midnight on the days leading up to Halloween,, the figure was sighted again, again and again.  The reports trickled in, unanimous.  There was a man in a demented bunny mask wielding a blunted, stained hatchet stalking the bridge.  On his shoulders, a cowl made from stitched-together rabbit pelts rotted slowly.

Often, people go missing near the Bunny Man’s favorite lurking place, presumed hunted by the deranged, semi-mythical figure.

It’s a fun story.  I’ve heard four variations of it by locals and the bridge itself is in a lonely enough place to make the visit seem creepy.  While this is more of a Halloween activity than a Christmas one, I enjoyed the brief visit.  

Christmas Tours

Back when I was a kid, my family had a little side-Christmas tradition.  We would load up the car and drive through the wealthier local neighborhoods, checking out the Christmas lights of an area.

I convinced my roommate Roy to try this with me on the day after Christmas.  We loaded up thermoses with hot chocolate and eggnog.  We cobbled together a few cookies and began wandering.

Initially, the Christmas Lights were fairly scant.  There are a lot of apartment complexes in our part of Fairfax, so we don’t often see people working hard to decorate. We ended up using a cute old-school information website called Hollys Tacky Christmas Lights.  She included a map with numerous houses that go all-out when setting up Christmas lights.

So Roy and I went on a tour.  There were houses with lights timed to music, lawns absolutely blanketed with glowing Christmas figurines, projected Santa Clauses in windows, large donation boxes for the hungry and more modest nearby house lights.  

It was a lot of fun.  Many of the sites were linked up to shortwave FM radio stations, allowing us to listen to music in the car while lights played.  

Our final stop on our little route was the Bull Run Festival of Lights Christmas Tour.  This is a 2.5 mile drive through along a road in North Virginia.  The lights are very cool and nice to see.  There are lights like dripping icicles in long forests, winding roads passing themed light castles, hopping toys and a full-blown carnival at the end of the ride.

However, the entrance charge for experiencing this is laughable.  Fourty dollars to drive slowly for about 20 minutes through this wonderland.  Truthfully, it’s only worth about five.  Not that it isn’t pretty, it is.  But forty dollars is obscene for the experience and the Carnival itself isn’t exactly filled with free stuff at the end.

Nevertheless, Roy and I had a good time.  We wandered back to our home in Fairfax, toasted hot chocolate mugs, talked to the sleepy cats and went to sleep.

Thus, the Christmas holidays are over.  I’m heading to New York city in the next couple of days for New Years.

So until then,

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written December 26 2022

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