
DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180061

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: THINGS TO DO 

SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

A PARK FOR ALL SEASONS, REASONS

WATER DARK AND brown as a too-strong cup of tea. Spanish moss drooping gloomily from the trees. A sign warning of poisonous snakes. The silence.

It was enough to spark an almost-5-year-old's imagination.

``Mom, is there crocodiles in here?'' asked Emma, keeping a safe distance between herself and a suspicious-looking log.

First Landing/Seashore State Park and Natural Area in Virginia Beach is a great place to take the whole family. There is a boat ramp, a campground, and 19 miles of hiking trails.

We were here to hike. The trails in this Virginia state park are wide and easy to navigate. So easy that when Emma was about 18 months old, my mother and I came here with my toddler in a stroller. And a couple of weeks ago, we stopped in to see the swamp with an elderly aunt visiting from Germany.

You have your choice of trails. Some are connectors, and one trail 6 miles long is the only one on which biking is permitted. That one - the Cape Henry Trail - ends at The Narrows, a small, no-swimming beach on Broad Bay.

With guests, I like to walk the Bald Cypress Nature Trail. It's only 1.5 miles long, and if you stop in at the park's Visitor Center, for 50 cents you can buy a booklet that explains points of interest along the way. On the trail, they are marked by numbered posts.

The Visitor Center closed this month for construction work and will reopen in the spring. It has some nice displays on local wildlife.

Our visitors are always fascinated by the park's eccentricities. Take cypress trees: Why do they have knees? How can there be dunes so far from the beach? How did fish get into this swamp?

We were lucky enough to first hear, then spot, a pileated woodpecker. Emma fingered a clump of Spanish moss and then chuckled when I read that North American Indians had used it to diaper their babies. Warmed by the Gulf Stream, this corner of the state is at the northern limit of the growing range for Spanish moss.

The park is a beautiful place to see local trees and wildlife. The branchwork of deciduous trees is lovely in winter, and the dense forest areas keep the wind away for a pleasant hike. Although warmer weather offers more animal life, if you look closely, you can find evidence of all kinds of wildlife even when it's cold. Our trail map and booklet pointed out hollow trees that shelter flying squirrels, bats, raccoons, snakes, lizards and woodpeckers. We read about cottonmouth moccasins but, I was thankful, did not see any.

And there are, to Emma's great disappointment, no crocodiles in the park.

We had to settle for tamer stuff. We searched the bark of pine trees for signs of beetle infestation. We stopped to inspect different varieties of lichen and to listen for squirrels scratching around in the leaves. We looked for migrating birds.

We've made a mental note that Seashore's campgrounds would be a good place to introduce Emma to our tent. And if I chicken out of roughing it in a sleeping bag that could put me eyeball to eyeball with those poisonous snakes, they offer cabins with a two-night minimum.

Until Dec. 1 and after March 1, you can pitch your tent or rent a small cabin that includes (Eureka!) sheets, towels, heat, a bathroom, microwave, fridge and stove and fireplace. ILLUSTRATION: PHILIP HOLMAN

The Bald Cypress Nature Trail provides views into the cypress swamp

along the trail's 1.5-mile meandering.

Led by 4-year-old Bethi, members of the Kiernan family of Virginia

Beach retreat from the beach across the dunes in the park on a

blustery fall afternoon recently.

IF YOU GO

What: Bay Youth Orchestras, with guest artists Wang Guowei, erhu;

Gao Hong, pipa; pianist Robert Ian Winstin

When: 7:30 tonight

Where: Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater

Program: Music written by Eastern composers for Western

orchestras and music written by Western composers for Eastern