Snooping around

Posted on March 28, 2014 by John M

Yesterday I took a lunchtime stroll around the National Mall to get a look at the preparations for the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival. It’s always more fun walking with friends, so a half-dozen folks joined me in the Enid A. Haupt Garden, just south of the Smithsonian Institution.

Our route took us west along the National Mall to just past 17th Street NW, where we slanted southwest past the Washington Monument to the Floral Library, which as of yet still lies dormant. Walking clockwise along the shoreline of the Tidal Basin, we saw that the visitor tents were up, preparations were in progress, and all the little blue paddleboats were tied up awaiting the throngs of sure to arrive next week. The only thing missing was the blossoms – while the trees are budding, none of them have yet begun to bloom.

Emerging from the path near the Japanese Lantern Statue marking the first cherry blossom tree planting, we headed north through the World War Two Memorial to have a look at the state of affairs in Constitution Gardens and its pond, with similar findings. Green leaves have appeared on the weeping willows, but a few days of warmer weather are needed to prompt most of the other trees into bloom.

Heading back east through the mall we encountered the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America‘s “Storm the Hill” display of  1,892 flags, representing the number of veterans that have died so far this year as a result of suicide. (From a Veteran’s Administration estimate of 22 veterans per day, not specific to any given war.) It’s a disturbing statistic, and the result of a long-perpetuated stigma associated with seeking help for the normal reaction to the trauma of combat. It’s a Catch-22 situation: as long as a service member doesn’t seek help, everything is supposedly fine. But seeking counseling and is considered an admission that something is wrong, and can lead to administrative relief from duty. While there are supposed to be no repercussions for seeking treatment, being relieved from duty for any reason isn’t Storm the Hillexactly career-enhancing, and a deliberate, deadly silence is the result. The military is trying to improve the situation, but some politicians, as I have written about previously, are actually seeking to make matters worse, by proposing legislation to curtail the Second Amendment rights of any veteran who seeks treatment. What a great choice for our veterans: suffer in silence, or ask for help and be deprived of your right to defend your home and family.

Getting back to the original purpose of yesterday’s walk, while it was a beautiful day, it was also apparent that a few consecutive days of warm weather are going to be needed to coax the buds into bloom. That, with a dismally rainy forecast for the coming weekend, seem to be pushing any cherry blossom-related activities well into next week.

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Walking, hiking, and pole-vaulting

Posted on March 24, 2014 by John M

You know, I’ve been active with a local walking group since 2009, started organizing events for the group a couple years ago, and finally took over the group (i.e., paying the bills) last Fall. Over time, the group redefined itself into a walking and hiking group, which makes you think about the difference between walking and hiking. You can hit a dictionary if you like, but hiking usually refers to walking in the countryside on trails, rather than a level of difficulty. There is often little difference in difficulty between a walk along a section of the Fairfax Cross County Trail and a day hike along a trail in the Shenandoah Mountains, for example. Aside from the drive to the trailhead, there’s not much difference in the amount of preparation either, so maybe the difference is mostly a frame of mind – whatever it takes to reach the level of immersion that you need to benefit from the experience. Personally, I’m pretty easily amused.

Recently I was gratified when the author of Hike Mt Shasta happened to visit and post a “like” on one of my blog posts about a day hike. A visit to that website underscores the fact that hiking on Mount Shasta and hiking on a mountain in my area are two different animals altogether. The top of Mount Shasta is over 14,000 feet; Hawksbill Mountain, the highest peak in the Shenandoah National Park at 4,050 feet, is less than a third as high. It’s easy enough to take a day trip to go hiking on Hawksbill Mountain, but you’d better mount an expedition to go mountain climbing on Mount Shasta!

ComparisonIn fact, if you stacked Hawksbill on top of Mount Shasta, you’d just about reach the height of Mount Kilimanjaro, at over 19,000 feet! At this point you’d better start interviewing participants to determine whether they are qualified to go, and whether they have any skill that might be useful during the expedition:

“The object of this year’s expedition is to see if we can find any traces of last year’s expedition.”

Anyway, it’s all good, and will help me field questions that pop up from time to time like why we don’t bother to split up into separate ability groups, assign group leads, sweepers, etc., etc., etc. If we’re going to do that, we may as well start interviewing Sherpa guides: it would be like pole-vaulting over mouse turds. We’re just doing a casual day hike, not mounting an expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro!

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Now that’s more like it!

Posted on March 22, 2014 by John M

IMG_5458This morning we went for a hike in Riverbend Park, on the south bank of the Potomac River in Northern Virginia. Our stated intent was to see if any Virginia bluebells had popped up, but also just to enjoy one of the few 70-degree spring-like days we’ve had so far this year.

The first leg of our route took us upstream along the Potomac Heritage Trail from the Visitor Center to Witch Hazel Bluff and back, about 1.6 miles round trip. After a short break we hiked downstream along the Potomac Heritage Trail into Great Falls National Park to visit the overlooks of the falls and return, about 3.9 miles round trip. The total hike was 5.4 miles and the trail was remarkably clear and dry, considering we had 4-8 inches of snow only 5 days ago!

Nope, no bluebells, but no one was very disappointed. Here and there some crocuses were just pushing out of the leaves and at one spot, a little patch of daffodils proudly proclaimed that Spring is on its way! Of course, the Great Falls overlooks are always worth the visit, and there were quite a few visitors despite the earliness of the season.

Sunday afternoon we’re doing a hike along Four Mile Run in Arlington, but the high temperature will be 25 degrees lower than Saturday’s, setting up things for another dose of snow this coming Tuesday.  But not to worry – the other day a sharp-eyed blogger reported that the cherry trees are budding on the National Mall in Washington DC, so it’s time to start doing some daytime snooping around down there during the week. This year I plan to do several cherry blossom hikes at different times during the day, before and during the predicted peak bloom days on April 8-12.

After that it will be off to the races, because all the must-do Spring hikes are just waiting to be checked off, like Virginia bluebells at Merrimac Farm Wildlife Management Center, azaleas at the National Arboretum, and roses at Bon-Air Memorial Rose Garden along Four Mile Run, just to name a few. That’s aside from some other out-of-the-way places like Conway Robinson Forest and the Blue Ridge Center that I haven’t had time to explore due to the messy weather. Looks like a wonderful Spring for hiking lies ahead!

PS: Say, I almost forgot to mention – something to consider when hiking at Riverbend or Great Falls parks is the lack of places to grab a bite of lunch afterwards. Great Falls itself is very small and mostly residential, so there’s not much there. Going a little further afield, you tend to get sucked into Tyson’s Corner, with all its traffic and navigational problems. Fortunately I remembered visiting Mylo’s Grill quite some time ago, about 10 miles away along Old Dominion Drive in McLean. They were able to set up a private room for about 20 of us on only 2 hours’ notice. The service was excellent and the food was outstanding! It’s pretty easy to see how they earned top marks from Yelp and Urban Spoon…

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Morning on the marsh

Posted on March 16, 2014 by John M

Saturday was taken up with hikes in a couple of nearby wetland areas, Huntley Meadows and Dyke Marsh. The goal of both visits was to check out the wildlife, so we didn’t set much of a demanding pace.

With over 1,500 acres of marsh and forest, Huntley Meadows is a little island of natural beauty right in the middle of the Washington metropolitan area. A year-long wetland restoration project has been in progress since April 2013 and only just ended  this month. As a consequence, our hiking group had not visited since February 2013, although I was making infrequent visits just to see what was going on. Our visit was a little early in the day, starting at 7:30am, just after dawn; and a little early in the season, since winter weather seems to be holding on tightly this year. The hike was about 3 miles, twice around the central wetland, and we finished up around 9am.

We had intended to visit Dyke Marsh back on March 10th, but were disappointed when the guide from the Friends of Dyke Marsh canceled the day before the hike. This time we got two guides, and they spent a lot of the hour and a half visit discussing the need to secure government funding for the Dyke Marsh Restoration and Management Plan, which is currently posted at a National Park Service website for public review and comment. The government can ill afford to spend money on much of anything these days, since it has been spending at a profligate rate since the The marsh over timelast year of the previous administration. You can see from the diagram at right, taken from the plan, that the marsh has been steadily disappearing since 1937, and if something is not done soon the wetlands will cease to exist, leaving only an inhospitable shoreline. I had a lot of reservations about this plan initially, but I suppose the project is less expensive and more legitimate than many of the things the government is currently blowing money on, like rigging the stock market (quantitative easing), buying votes (Obamaphones), rewarding political cronies with government-backed loans (Solyndra ), buying weapon systems that don’t work and are never delivered, and giving foreign aid to countries that accept the money with one hand while stabbing us in the back with the other. Instead, we would actually get something tangible that would repair damage caused by previous generations and benefit future generations.

Anyway, during this Saturday’s visit we covered about 2 miles in the marsh, seeing ducks, geese, herons, seagulls, and an osprey that really taxed my little pocket camera’s zoom lens capability trying to get a closeup. Between the two hikes together, Huntley Meadows and Dyke Marsh, we managed 5 miles of smiles.

I took Sunday off since it’s supposed to start snowing sometime this afternoon and/or evening, continuing until Tuesday. Next Saturday we’re off to Riverbend Park to see if the Virginia Bluebells are blooming, but even if they aren’t, we’ll be rewarded with a nice hike along the Potomac Heritage Trail and a visit to the Great Falls overlooks.

P.S. – Say, this is my 100th post!

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Why I don’t have a green thumb

Posted on March 13, 2014 by John M

I never seem to be able to do much with my back yard. It’s shady, being adjacent to a vacant, wooded lot that thankfully cannot be developed, and underneath the thin topsoil is marine clay interspersed with stones the size of your fist. So nothing grows that well, and I have these occasional visitors…

I don’t feed them; they help themselves! Last year I had a lot of catnip growing, both in the ground and in a big gray-green pot, but my visitors cleaned the whole thing out overnight! Fortunately the few clumps of daffodils didn’t appeal to them, and I won’t plant catnip until next month.

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Disappointment

Posted on March 10, 2014 by John M

I’m kind of disappointed with the past weekend’s hikes. Plans almost always fall short of expectations during execution, and these were no exception. You just can’t make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t, as this fellow I used to work with once commented.

Saturday morning was supposed to start with a bird watching nature hike in Dyke Marsh, hosted by a member of the Friends of Dyke Marsh, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving Dyke Marsh from being lost to the ever-changing course of the Potomac River. Unfortunately, despite the sunny 65-degree day, the host decided it was too muddy and declined to take the group bird watching, so I had to substitute a walk along the Mount Vernon Trail. A 5-mile hike was the result; probably a disappointment to those who signed up to see and learn about the birds that inhabit the marsh, rather than just getting some exercise.

Sunday I planned a 6.5 mile hike to Roosevelt Island, starting from Fort C.F. Smith park. The island is pleasant enough during the spring and summer, but during the winter it is drab, gray and brown. I’m not a big fan of Roosevelt Island anyway, because its small parking lot is almost always full. (That’s why we had to start at Fort C.F. Smith.) But to make things worse, both Fort C.F. Smith’s and Roosevelt Island’s Calvinfacilities were locked for the winter, despite website entries to the contrary. There was a single portable toilet at Roosevelt Island, which wasn’t of much use to a group of 50-odd people: you’d have to wait almost an hour for everyone to have a turn, and setting a shorter arbitrary time limit to wait would just make things worse for those who weren’t at the front of the line. Needless to say, one of the hikers just couldn’t resist taking me to task about this, as if there was something I could do about it. There’s always someone anxious to point out the hole in the donut.

Incidentally, the statue of Theodore Roosevelt on the island, with its archetypical demagogic pose, is amazingly similar to statues of a few other notable persons. I suppose that’s not too surprising: all of them appealed to the emotions of the masses and sometimes had to break eggs in order to make an omelet, as the saying goes.

I’ll be happier when spring finally arrives, and all the closed facilities reopen. Plans tend to work better when you have something to work with.

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Meetup

Posted on March 5, 2014 by John M

MeetupIn the last post I commented about how Meetup, the online resource for finding and meeting others to do fun things together, had been under a denial of service attack since last Thursday. I’m not sure what motivated the clowns* who perpetrated the attack,  but Meetup’s technicians eventually were able to beat the attacks into submission and all seems well again. There were a lot of delayed emails announcements and probably some folks uncertain about whether scheduled posted events were still taking place, but all in all, I think our hiking group has had more inconveniences due to bad weather and facilities closures than any outages in Meetup’s support for our activities. For example:

“Sorry, the public restrooms are locked and the water is turned off to the drinking fountains during the winter. They won’t be open until April.”
What, no one pees or needs a drink of water for 6 months during the winter? Do we get to stop paying county taxes during the winter, too?

The good news is, not only is Meetup back to full functionality, but Scott Heiferman, the cofounder and CEO of Meetup, sent out an email today announcing a 7 day credit to all Meetup Organizers, to reimburse them for a week’s worth of dues while the site was under attack. To me, that is going above and beyond the call — I don’t remember ever hearing about power companies offering refunds when your power goes out, or cable companies reimbursing you for periods when your cable is out! Guess I should keep an eye on Meetup in case they ever announce an IPO!

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Wonderland

Posted on March 3, 2014 by John M

As the weeks go by, the “wonder” part of “winter wonderland” seems to be wondering just how much longer before winter eases its grip on us. Not just yet, anyway.

Last weekend we went on a 6-mile hike along the Billy Goat Trail, sections B and C, at Carderock, Maryland. I purposely broke the hike into two legs, one for each section, so hikers could opt out after one of the sections if they had other things to do. It looked like a fairly seasonable morning, as far as temperatures go, since the mercury got up to the low 50s, but looks can be deceptive: the C&O Canal, while not frozen solid, had a very thick layer of ice on top. Some of our hikers tossed a few stones of varying sizes out onto the ice to see if any would break through, with no success.

The water temperature wasn’t cold enough to dissuade a couple of paddleboarders from testing the rapids on the Potomac. The rapids themselves are dangerous enough — a kayaker was lost at nearby Great Falls last July — but the low water temperature adds another dangerous dimension. It looked like the paddle boarders were wearing wetsuits, but survival time immersed in freezing water is pretty short. “Generally, a person can survive in 41-degree F (5-degree C) water for 10, 15 or 20 minutes before the muscles get weak, you lose coordination and strength, which happens because the blood moves away from the extremities and toward the center, or core, of the body.” (Scientific American)

Onshore, our travails were limited to mud on the trail and the usual rock scramble here and there. Carderock is becoming one of my favorite spots for a pleasant morning outing in a natural setting that is close enough to get to without a long drive, and leaves time enough to still run the usual weekend errands during the afternoon after the hike.

The following day we took advantage of the seasonable weather for another 6-mile hike along the Mount Vernon Trail, but that was the end of our false spring: it began raining immediately after the hike, followed by snow starting during the night. It’s been snowing steady all morning, and there’s no end in sight until sometime Monday night. It’s a good thing that my weekend errands included a trip to the grocery store!

Postscript: Meetup, the outstanding online event support resource that hosts my hiking group, has been under a denial of service attack since last Thursday. Their technicians have been at it around the clock since then fighting it off, with mixed success, but I may have to figure out an alternative to post hike information in case Meetup gets clobbered. While this blog isn’t configured for event support (calendaring, signups and reservations, etc.), hikers would at least be able to look up the event details if Meetup is down. We’ll see.

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Delayed Awakening

Posted on February 27, 2014 by John M

Last weekend I finally managed to do a hike across the Potomac from Jones Point, in Alexandria, Virginia, across Wilson Bridge to The Awakening statue in National Harbor, Maryland. I originally planned the 6.4-mile hike for February 15th, and hoped to schedule a subsequent hike at a to-be-determined national park on Presidents’ Day, to take advantage of one of the National Park Service’s free entrance days. But as everyone in the eastern US knows, a heavy snowstorm hit a few days earlier, grounding many airline flights, covering the roads with snow and ice, and generally wrecking everyone’s Valentine’s Day plans. I postponed the hike until the following Saturday, February 22nd, and although the weather cleared, it was too late to come up with a big event on Monday to take advantage of the free entrance day. On Monday a friend phoned and rousted me out of my house for a 5-mile walk along Alexandria’s waterfront. Apart from the ice and snow on the ground, it was a beautiful, calm day and the Potomac River was like a sheet of glass.

The following Thursday I had an appointment at Walter Reed, so I thought to take an extra couple of hours’ time to reconnoiter the route for a 5-mike hike along Rock Creek, from Meadowbrook Local Park to the National Park Seminary and back, with an optional 1-mile excursion to Woodend Nature Sanctuary along the way. A good thing too, because while my plans looked good on paper, it soon became obvious they weren’t going to work. Meadowbrook Local Park proved to be an inadequate trailhead since it lacks public restrooms. (Unless you rent the building: $180 for 4 hours, plus a $150 deposit!) A herd of deer greeted me in Woodend Sanctuary, but I found out that its restrooms are locked on the weekend, too. Finally, the northern half of the route was an unpleasant mix of ice, snow and mud, so the hike as planned was just not going to happen.

The only good that came of the recon was confirmation that the National Park Seminary is well worth a visit. The site was an exclusive  private girls’ school from 1894 to 1942 before being taken over by the U.S. Army for use as a rehabilitation facility for wounded soldiers. Since 2003 it is back in private hands, being renovated and restored to form the centerpiece for a residential neighborhood. The Seminary features a bewildering variety of sorority houses designed to resemble Swiss chalets, English castles, Italian villas and Japanese Pagodas. Dotting the grounds like pepper specks on your breakfast eggs are statues of Greek goddesses, lions, and even a statue of Hiawatha! Needless to say, we just have to hike to this place!

Getting back to The Awakening, Saturday finally rolled around bright and sunny, and the hike across Wilson Bridge to National Harbor went off without a hitch. One item of note is that construction of the Capital Wheel has begun. When completed in May, the 175-foot Ferris wheel supposedly will offer scenic views of Washington DC, although you would have to have pretty good eyesight to make out any detail! Here’s a few photos, but there are a lot more taken by some of the hikers here.

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Persistence

Posted on February 13, 2014 by John M

Persistence is the word that comes to mind when looking back over the past couple of weekends’ hikes: the persistence of  a cold Winter, as it drags through February and probably at least halfway through March, and the persistence of the Alexandria Walking & Hiking Group, as members continue to turn out in sizable numbers to get some exercise, despite the cold weather and sometimes snowy and/or muddy surfaces.

JonesPointBack on February 1st we started from Jones Point and walked south along the Potomac River to Dyke Marsh and back, a total of 5 miles. Ice and mud weren’t a problem, since half of our route was paved, along the Mount Vernon Trail, and the other half was fine gravel and a stretch of boardwalk, along the Dyke Marsh Trail. Although Dyke Marsh is home to many types of birds, the main group didn’t see too many, probably because we didn’t start until 10 am. However, when the main group turned back towards Jones Point, a few hikers stayed behind in Dyke Marsh and took some wonderful photos, with the assistance of a park ranger who happened to be out on the trail. Fortunately I’ve arranged for a couple of early morning outings in March with the Friends of Dyke Marsh, so there’s still a chance for the hikers who missed seeing the wildlife to have a second try.

AccotinkThe next day I had planned a 5-mile hike around Lake Accotink, but one of our group lives nearby and alerted me that part of the trail around the lake was pretty muddy. Not to worry, though, because I simply changed our route: instead of heading north and around the lake, we went the other direction along the Cross County Trail, which is paved and follows Accotink Creek south from the railroad trestle bridge near the lake dam’s spillway. The Cross Country Trail is a valuable asset in Fairfax County, since it provides miles of wooded trails for urban dwellers to get a taste of nature without driving far.

SouthRunLast weekend there was snow in the forecast, so I again opted for paved trails to keep us from slogging around in the mud. Saturday was a hike around Lake Mercer, with a short excursion along South Run Trail halfway through the loop, just to make sure we got in our 5 miles! Lake Mercer was almost completely frozen, but our group set a pretty fast pace so we weren’t cold at all.

Sunday it was back to Old Town Alexandria, for a 5-mile walk around town. Back in January I hosted a couple of walks around Old Town focused on all the historic landmarks, but this walk was not so scripted. Instead we followed a familiar route, plus we climbed up Shuter’s Hill to see Fort Ellsworth, one of the Civil War fortifications of Washington DC, and walked around to the east side of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, where there is a marvelous panoramic view of Old Town. So marvelous, in fact, that one of Matthew Brady’s photographers visited the site in 1864 to take a panoramic photo of the same view, which then included the campsite of the 44th New York Volunteer Infantry, nicknamed “Ellsworth Avengers” or “People’s Ellsworth Regiment,” after Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, the first Union officer killed in the Civil War.

I can already see that this coming weekend will be another round of persistence. There’s 30 hikers already signed up for a 6-mile hike on Saturday from Jones Point across Wilson Bridge to National Harbor and back, but there’s also 4-10 inches of snow falling even as I write!

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