Wrong Turn, Great View

Although I was told the Springfield Landfill in Western Henrico was hard to find, my Google Map driving directions couldn't have been more clear, and I went straight to it in the rain this morning, with one small carload of household cast-offs. Much to my surprise, I was asked for $3 to get in. I was used to getting into the great dump in Hanover County for free, so this was annoying. You would think the clerk would notice my tiny car couldn't possibly hold much junk.

I immediately got lost. I saw a holding pen for tires straight ahead, and a road off to the left. A truck had just taken the road, so I followed it. It was a long and circling dirt road that got progressively muddier and I was climbing a grassy mini-mountain. By the time I was making the last loop to where the top flattened off, I could see literally for miles across Henrico County. I was way, way up. What kind of dump was this? It was really muddy up at the top, and there were a couple of bulldozers, and some debris, like a clothes and shoes, but not the amount of garbage I was expecting.

"Where's the dump part?" I asked one of the bulldozer guys. He was startled to see me. "At the bottom, you should have made a right turn when you came in."

I turned my little car around and headed back down the mountain. It was then I noticed that this muddy road I was going down -- well, one side was a sheer cliff and there wasn't much between me and a very long roll down. I had to trust my little Mazda to hang onto the road.

Back at the bottom of the mountain, I saw the ramp that took me to a more traditional dumping place, a place where you just threw your trash into big trailers, and another area where you could put things that others might want. I was sad that it cost $3 to get to this junk display case. Some of my favorite lamps and furniture came from the shed of possibilities at the Hanover dump and it didn't cost me $3 to pick over it.

I had planned to make several dump runs that day, but between the rain and the $3, I gave up after one. I told my husband about my misadventure when he came home, after stopping to hose all the dump mud off my white car. "What if you had slid off the mountain?" he said, shocked that I had made such a colossal wrong turn.

"I thought about that," I said. But I didn't. And that was quite a view. Are there any other really high places you can go and see Henrico?