No, we did not do any sort of traditional Memorial Day activities in our nation’s capital. We left that up to the hundreds of thousands of tourists that were here. I’m sure it would have been great to work to push ourselves to the front of the line to see one of the dozen of memorials around the city, but we decided to do the next best thing - leave the city altogether.
On Sunday, we bought a hiking book and decided to try out one of the trails near Arlington. We hadn’t done any real hiking since we left Portland, but we dusted off our boots and headed for Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, about 25 minutes out of town. When we got out of our car and saw all the families with small children, I started to worry that this hike might be a little too easy for us. But using our guidebook, we were able to find a “narrow footpath” along the Scott’s Run stream bank. It did warn us that the path was “severly eroded in sections,” but we figured it couldn’t be that bad. That was, until we rounded a corner and realized that we were going to be scrambling over boulders back and forth across the water for a while. After about an hour of climbing and sliding over rocks, we finally made it to the waterfalls where Scott’s Run meets the Potamac River.
We were about a third of the way done with our planned hike at that point. It had taken us an hour and half (the whole hike was only supposed to take two hours). It was almost 90 degrees. We realized that the area we were standing in by the waterfall was covered with poison ivy and poison oak. We decided it was time to go home.
It took another hour or so to find our way back to the car. (Scott’s Run is great, but the trails are not well-marked.) We spotted several snakes and lizards along the way, to Shawn’s glee and my terror. Shawn even got a chance to see my rare “oh-my-god, there’s a snake next to my foot” dance. Complete with a little shriek. Very exciting.
It was a good adventure, but an exhausting one. Maybe next time we’ll just suck it up and deal with the tourists.
Tags: adventures
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June 2, 2006 at 8:58 am
Cheryl
Beautiful scenery, even if you did have to put up with lizards and snakes. I watched the National Spelling Bee last night. What fun!
June 6, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Madalyn
Jennifer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m so glad that you started a blog! I’ve already added Shawn’s to my bloglines list, and now I’m going to add your’s.
I tried sending you a letter the other week, but it was returned to me. I asked Shawn to give me your current address, which he did, but it’s the same one I sent the letter to… Strange, huh? Do you want me to try resending it right away, or wait until you find out where Shawn’s assignment is?