The town I live in now has two parks! I could do this! But it would probably take less than an hour to explore them both thoroughly (including the time needed to walk from one to the other).

My son’s favorite version of park-hopping involves the Disney complex at Orlando. He’s got a point; I highly recommend laying out the extra bucks for this feature.

But the most influential experience along these lines in my life happened one summer day in 2013 in Prince William County, Virginia. The county used to have a parkhopper thing where you got a stamp every time you visited a park, so on that nice Saturday, we made a plan to visit as many as we could before the sun went down. I think we made it to four. The kid’s favorite was a place that had mini-golf, batting cages, and a swimming hole.

My favorite was Brentsville Courthouse, where the poor kid was bored out of his mind. We looked at an 1874 church and a one-room schoolhouse built in 1928. We poked our heads into the newly restored 1822 courthouse and took a nice stroll around the grounds. As we were leaving, the site manager pointed out the jail, which was undergoing renovations and was the big focus of fund-raising that week. We were literally steps from our car when he told us this wild story about a commonwealth attorney who got shot IN a jail cell while incarcerated for running off with the teenage daughter of the richest guy in town. It really was like, “Here’s this great story! Thanks for coming! Bye!” The hubs was like, “that’s a hell of a story. Is there a book?” I googled furiously. There was not.

And that is how I came to write my first book, which was published three years later. It really is a wild tale. You should buy a copy and read all about it if you haven’t already!