Sign Up  /  Login

Chippokes Plantation LbNA #7872 (ARCHIVED)

Owner:Renee
Plant date:Apr 17, 2004
Location:
City:Surry
County:Surry
State:Virginia
Boxes:3
Found by: Team Eggbert (2)
Last found:Mar 30, 2009
Status:FFFFFFFF
Last edited:Apr 17, 2004
COMPASS NEEDED. PICK UP A TRAIL MAP AT THE VISITOR CENTER.
The walk is flat, and between 1 and 2 miles.

To reach Chippokes Plantation State Park from Richmond, take I-95 to Route 10 toward Hopewell. Follow Route 10 for about 40 miles to the tiny town of Surry. Turn left at the intersection of Routes 10 and 31. Turn right at the blinking light. Turn left at Route 364 (Alliance Road) and the park is 4 miles down on the left. There is a $3 parking fee on the weekends and a $2 fee on weekdays.

You can either park in the Visitor Center parking lot and walk about 1 mile to the mansion on the College Run Trail, or you can drive to the mansion itself and park there. Watch for signs in the park after you decide how much work you want to do.

#1 -- Chippokes Plantation Mansion -- the plantation itself has been a working plantation since 1619. The mansion was built right before the Civil War.

Go to the back of the mansion, to the lovely formal gardens. Among the flowers are the white marble gravestones of Victor and Evelyn Stewart, the last owners. Find these graves, and thank Mrs. Stewart for so kindly donating her property to Virginia after her death. As you face the graves, look to your right. There are 5 white posts with peaked tops. A few steps beyond these posts, you should go to the right on what looks like a truck trail. After a few more paces, you need to go left, down the wide brick steps. At the bottom of the steps, take a hard right onto another truck path. Take this path a very short way until, looming up in front of you, is a huge pine tree with a flat, wooden bat (or butterfly?)house nailed to it. Take a compass reading of 60 degrees, and see that it points you down toward a very large, gnarled old tree at the very edge of the open farm field. Box #1 is in the crevice at the base of the tree. (It is not in the large hole to the side of the tree.)

#2 -- Pork, Peanuts and Pine -- Three of the most important products in the area over the centuries. A Pork, Peanut and Pine Festival is held here every summer.

From the front door of the mansion, cross the front lawn. Go through the opening in the fence to the paved path. Go right, which leads you to a sign where you can choose to go on the James River Trail or the Lower Chippokes Creek Trail. Go on the James River Trail. You will walk for quite a ways on the edge of the farm fields, until the trail enters the forest and goes toward the James River. Right as you begin the descent to the beach at the shore of the James River (you will be able to see the river, and there are small stones in the path on the descent), look into the field on your left. You will see a wooden bike rack and a wooden bench overlooking the river. Also, there is a huge uprooted tree with its base facing the bike rack. Slightly to the rear and left of the tree's rootball is a three-trunked holly tree. Search this tree -- it is very interesting what you will find. But you will not find Box #2 here. Box #2 is about 60 paces directly south in a crevice at the base of a huge, smooth-barked tree. Rehide well.

#3 -- Fossils -- there are fossils in the cliffs along the river, but you must get a permit to dig them. Luckily, my fossils stamp requires no permit.

Return to the path and visit the beach if you like, but then go back the way you came. When you emerge from the forest at the field's edge again, you will see two square flat concrete markers on your left. Take that truck trail between those trees over there on your left. Very shortly (50 - 100 paces)you will once again emerge into an open area bordering the cultivated fields. Use your compass and go directly southwest, which will walk you along the edge of this cultivated field. Walking 40-50 paces along this field edge will bring you to two ENORMOUS trees just a few paces into the woods, one a pine and one a hardwood, that are growing so close together that they look like they have the same roots. Pass these two trees and walk 30 more paces down the field's edge and, off in the woods about 8 paces, you will find a huge gnarled cedar tree. Box #3 is hidden in a hollow at the base of the back of the tree.

Retrace your steps along James River Trail to get back to the mansion.