Hike 14: Black Hill Regional Park

I was at an AP Bio workshop this week, so I couldn't go on any new hikes, but this hike is literally in our backyard!  You can see the trail from our kitchen window and we've been on it a bunch of times.  Since it was 104 degrees in DC today, here's a blast from the past to cool you off...

There's the trail, buried under three feet of snow!  We've walked it, run it, and biked it.  It's a very loopy trail that follows the fingers of Little Seneca Lake, which was created when they put a dam in Little Seneca Creek 40 years ago.  I tend to get lost when straying off the main trail, but it's a very scenic and easy to traverse path.  We see all manner of animals when we hike on it, mostly geese and turtles, but also some nice egret-type birds and small mammals...and fish! 

We discovered the Visitor Center on one of our bike rides down the trail and you can rent boats and they have a great nature center with a pretty butterfly garden.  Did some fun geocaching along the trail too!

Hike 5: National Arboretum

My new favorite place!  And surprisingly so...the description in the book is very bland compared to the awesomeness of the National Arboretum.  It's not hard to get to, and I definitely recommend driving.  The park is HUGE and I only did about a third of it, but I saw the best third!  I think the rest of the park would be great during the blooming season (assuming you don't have lots of allergies).  I wasn't quite sure where I was going, so I parked at the Mount Hamilton footpath and followed trails through rhododendrons and azaleas.

I didn't want to get lost (entirely probable, given the loopy nature of the paths), so I tried not to venture off too far.  As I cleared the azalea collection, I happened onto a very English-type garden and then looked through some trees and saw gigantic Grecian columns standing in the middle of a field!  Even reading about it in the trail book didn't prepare me for the total cool-ness of this view.

So it turns out these are columns from the Capitol building's east portico from 1830-1960.  They were installed at the Arboretum in 1990.  I kept going around the path behind the columns and stumbled upon the North American Pavilion, which doesn't even begin to describe the most amazing collection of bonsai trees I've ever seen!  I took a picture of every single one.  They were so cute!  I mean, they had a giant sycamore no taller than a foot and a half!

 

There's a little courtyard that's very serene and peaceful and a museum, which was great, mostly because they had air conditioning and I did this hike on the day it was supposed to be 98 degrees.  :)  Then you can walk through another pavilion that showcases how the Chinese used rocks and bonsai and water as garden art. 

Around the back, there a patio with tables set out next to a pond containing water lilies and fish!  There were people setting up tents around here, and I bet this is a really popular events location.

It was getting on toward lunch time at this point, so on my way back to the car, I walked through the herb garden, which featured some beautiful landscaping.

This is definitely number one on my list of places I should take tourists.  My mom might even like it, even though her favorite outdoor motto is: You've seen one tree, you've seen them all!

Hike 3: Potomac Park and Hains Point

Hains Point is actually part of East Potomac Park.  It's not the most pedestrian accessible area - definitely do NOT walk down 14th Street, which according to the map, is the most direct way to go, but there's no crosswalks to get over/under the bridge.  But after some maneuvering around the Municipal Fish Market and the Washington Marina, I made it to Ohio Drive, which does a loop around the park down to Hains Point.

The pedestrian path was actually flooded, which amused me to no end, but there was hardly any automobile traffic so I just walked along the curb.  There were lots of fishers, bikers and, surprisingly, rollerbladers!  It's a very picturesque walk, but it got boring fairly quickly.  There's a golf course in the middle of the loop and that's pretty much your scenery the whole way around.

The book said there was a giant aluminum statue thing called The Awakening on Hains Point, but I couldn't find it.  I did find a couple monuments I'd never seen before on my meandering way back to the Smithsonian Metro.  If you follow the signposts on Ohio Drive leaving the park, you'll pass by the George Mason monument, which is quite pretty, although this is only the picture of his statue behind a ring of purple flowers.

Then cross a little bridge over the Tidal Basin to the FDR Memorial.  I've seen this one a bunch of times and it's my favorite - lots of interesting stuff (quotes, bronze sculptures) to look at, waterfalls, great layout.  It's quite symbolic, actually.  The water features are different in each of the four sections of the monument and they all get successively more broken and upset to reflect the state of the world at each time period in his presidency.

And right around the Tidal Basin is the new MLK, Jr Memorial!  I'd never seen it before and I was really mad that my camera ran out of battery so I couldn't take more pics, but it's quite powerful.

P.S.  I looked up The Awakening on the Internet and it's been moved to National Harbor!  I guess I'll have to go there sometime.  It would have made Hains Point a lot more interesting!

Hikes 2 and 4: Columbia and Roosevelt Islands

Columbia Island and Roosevelt Island sit between DC and Virginia with the Potomac River on the east and the man-made Boundary Channel on the west. There's actually a lot of political history surrounding Columbia Island, specifically whether it belongs to DC or VA.  Eventually, DC got Columbia Island and VA got the land where Reagan National Airport was developed. 

I was accompanied on this hike by my friend Manana, and her son, Stevie.  We had a great time even though it rained on us (although sometimes that just adds to the adventure).  I'd never been to either of these islands before and they're not that hard to get to, except you do have to approach the parking lot from GW Parkway north, which takes a little maneuvering through the outer edges of the city.

As is usual when I'm hiking, we started out going the wrong way cuz I wasn't paying attention to where the bridge to the Theodore Roosevelt Island was, but we discovered a very nice section of the Potomac Trail and had a nice view of Key Bridge and Georgetown across the river.

Once we actually crossed the little footbridge to the island, we checked out the memorial to Theodore Roosevelt and walked around the loop.  It's not the most exciting place, but it's probably a nice stop for people who have done the usual tourist stuff.

We followed the Mt. Vernon Trail south and Stevie spotted something that made the entire hike worth it...

They were SO CUTE!!!  Their mom was lying in a space a few hundred feet further.  We were speculating on whether she was hurt or just complacent cuz she was pretty much in the same spot on our return trip too.

We didn't go around the entire loop described in the book cuz honestly, this is not the most pedestrian friendly hike and we had a seven year old with us.  You have to cross GW Parkway in some very busy spots and the trail itself doesn't actually loop so if you want to follow the book's instructions, you have to walk around some highly traveled roadways.

And it rained.  It was a nice little summer shower which got us completely soaked, but, being a summer rain, we also dried off pretty quickly.  We made it to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, saw an interesting monument across the way that I can't identify, and headed back to the car.

Hike 6: Kenilworth Gardens

This is sort of cheating too, but I've already been to Kenilworth Gardens.  It was for a field trip with my Marine Bio students and my friend's AP Physics students.  The physics students had built these underwater robots and we needed a place to test them out.  My students were going to study and do water quality testing of the samples the robots collected.  It was a great little field trip, but because Kenilworth Gardens is a marshy group of water lily ponds, the robots kept getting stuck amidst the stems and it was really dark underwater so the cameras had a hard time seeing anything.  :)

It's a very small little place on the DC and Maryland border between Route 50 and I-295.  The "trail" only goes about a mile into the marsh, but it's quite picturesque and great if you're into water lilies and lotuses.  The visitor center has a nice exhibit of flora and fauna in Kenilworth.  We had to hide in there for about 20 minutes during our field trip because it started to thunderstorm.  :)

Hike 1: Lincoln Memorial to Lincoln Park

After graduation started, I embarked on the first hike in the book since I was in the middle of DC anyway.  This one was an 8 mile loop from Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall to Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill.  I skipped the section between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument cuz I've "been there, done that," but the rest of the trip was quite interesting - I saw a lot of parts of DC I'd never set foot in before!

I started the bike/hike at Constitution and 9th, passing the National Archives and going through John Marshall Park.

Past the Court of Appeals and the statue of Lincoln, there's a monument called the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism during World War II.  The what?  Yup - it was opened ten years ago to recognize the unjust wartime internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans and honors the Japanese Americans who served in the armed forces.

You get a really clear picture of the Capitol about a block down - lots of tourists and government workers around here!  I had to walk my bike for a bit. 

Biked about a mile down Constitution Ave through a very nice residential neighborhood and hit Lincoln Park on Massachusetts Ave.  There's two large monuments in the park - one to Lincoln (duh) called Emancipation and one for Mary McLeod Bethune, a black educator, civil right leader, and founder of the National Council of Negro Women.  There's also a little playground.  Lincoln Park is "Mommy Central" - there were women with strollers and babies everywhere! 

Everyone knows I'm directionally challenged, but the book is very detailed and I didn't really get confused until I hit Eastern Market.  By then, the rain had picked up and I was getting all wet so I hopped on the metro and rode to lunch.  :)  Taking your bike on Metro is a bit complicated, actually - definitely go when it's not crowded (you're not allowed to have your bike during rush hour anyway).

Hikes 9-11: Rock Creek Park

Yesterday was our school's graduation at Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall.  A couple of us decided to bike down there instead of taking the bus from school or metro.  As my first hiking endeavor, I'm cheating a little bit cuz I biked instead of hiked and Rock Creek Park is so big, it's actually three different hikes in the book, but I have to maximize my hiking efficiency this summer!  :)

The book splits Rock Creek Park into three sections - wild northern section, rocky central section, and arboreous southern section.  The bike route we took was from about 16th St in Silver Spring, paralleling Beach Drive, getting off at Virginia Ave in DC, which takes you through parts of all three sections.  There's all sorts of stops you can make on the way (we were in a rush cuz we had to get to graduation), including the National Zoo and a historical cemetery.

It was a sort of drizzly day, so I give myself props for braving non-ideal weather conditions, but I had really good biking companions (thanks Charlie and John!) and it was tons of fun!  The biking was quite easy - not too many uphill pushes, very few sharp turns, and some fun scenery (nice bridges).  The creek is very picturesque, but the road traffic on Beach Dr can be a bit distracting.  I do have to say the drivers on the road were very polite and respectful of us bikers when we did have to be on the main drag.  There are lots of signs up that say "Caution: Bikers on Beach Drive."  The other side of Rock Creek near Oregon Ave would feel more "woodsy," I think, but it's pretty awesome that we have this big chunk of national park (est 1890!) right in the middle of Washington DC. 

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles

Everyone keeps asking me what my plans are for the summer.  I have a couple things planned (friend's wedding - yay!, planning for AP Bio, NASA moon workshop), but I also have a lot of free time, which is a bit unusual for me.  So I decided to go hiking!  (My mom is shaking her head in disbelief right now.  She can't imagine why someone she raised would want to spend time in a non-climate controlled environment.)  :)  I bought this book, "60 Hikes Within 60 Miles" for the Washington, DC area for when people came to visit and wanted to see something besides the National Mall, but I haven't used it much.  I'm going to try to do all of them!