Wednesday afternoon I was out snooping around Piscataway Park and the National Colonial Farm to prepare for a hike I scheduled for this coming Sunday. Piscataway Park is named for Piscataway Creek, which in turn is named for the Piscataway Indian Tribe. It is located in Accokeek, Maryland, and was founded to preserve the natural view of the Potomac River from Mount Vernon.

The baseline route I plotted pieced together the trails on the park map into a big counter-clockwise hike from the Visitor Center downstream along the Potomac past the Colonial Farm, inland around the adjacent fields, back upstream along the park road and a trail to the Ecosystem Farm, and then back to the shoreline for the final walk back to the Visitor Center. It was only about 3 miles as the crow flies, but by the time I got back in the car to drive over to explore the adjacent boardwalk trail, 5 miles and 2 hours had somehow slipped by! It think the constant side trips to look at Mount Vernon, directly across the Potomac River, or the reconstructed buildings and livestock in the Colonial and Ecosystem farms had something to do with it. Or it could have been the dozens of butterflies and the occasional rabbit that crossed my path along the way.

Anyway, it was getting towards evening before I made it to the boardwalk for the short walk over the marsh, and if the hundreds of swallows flitting overhead were too fast for me to catch a photo, it was because they were enjoying an hearty evening meal of mosquitoes and other flying insects, leaving less of them to bother me.