Swain’s Lock – Splattered Brains

The Heat of Summer – Once Again!

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city……………..The Lovin’ Spoonful

The temperatures began its rise into the 90s last weekend. Knowing that it was going to get very hot, we started our walk earlier than usual on Sunday. We were on the trail at Swains Lock before 8 O’clock! In spite of the early start, it did not take too long before we began to feel the sweat collecting on our necks and back. It was going to be one of those days!

We walked towards Great Falls. Here is a picture of the tavern at Great Falls.

We continue to see flowers for the first time this year along the towpath. The numbers I am recording are staggering. These include Tall Meadow Rue,

Yarrow,

Trumpet Flower,

Pickerelweed,

Mullein,Thistle,what I believe is Bindweed of some kind,

Black Cohosh,

Day Lily,Basil Bee Balm,

and a couple of flowers that I could not identify.

We also found raspberryand pawpaw fruitalong the trail.

The heat of the summer also brings out the dragonflies and the butterflies. We saw a few skimmers, a zebra swallowtail, and even a Red Admiral and a Crescent butterfly. (I will post some of these and other pictures in my Pbase photo galleries.)

We took a detour on to the River Trail just north of Great Falls on our way back to Swains Lock. It was a delightful experience! We ended up walking on a narrow trail along the side of the river. There were very few people on the trail and we saw a lot of birds. There were so many herons on the other side of the river, with many of them standing on their own individual rocks!I have to believe that there is a park on the other side of the river that is attracting the herons.

We also saw a Indigo Bunting.At first I was not sure about the identity of this bird, being confused by a shaft of light falling on its breast, but I now feel more confident of my conclusion. (Of course, I am not an expert on this matter, and my process for identifying a bird is always subject to verification/confirmation by any knowledgeable birder or ornithologist who happens to come this way!)

Here is the video of the song that I mentioned at the beginning of the blog.

A Closed Section of the Towpath

I saw this at the website of the National Park Service for the C&O Canal Park after I got home from my bike ride.I might have been the only person to ride the section after it was closed.

In fact I had to cross this barrier at Pennyfield Lock to exit the closed section after I was done with my ride.Earlier on, I had encountered a young girl working for the NPS who belonged to the Student Conservation Association who was taking a count of the number of fallen trees in the closed section. She said that she had counted 20, and that she had stopped because she had come to an impassable section. I was able to cross this section by carrying my bike off the trail and back on to it.The section of the trail in the picture below looked beaten up from water flowing over the trail.A park ranger had stopped me earlier. He looked a little upset when he saw me. He got up from the stump he had been sitting on. “Did you not see the sign that the trail was closed?”, he asked. I had been prepared for the encounter. “I have to get back to my car which is parked at Pennyfield Lock,” I said. He immediately relented. He actually smiled.

I had actually encountered an NPS pickup truck with a couple of kids earlier on in the closed section of the trail. They were backing away from the site of the destruction on the trail, all the way back to Swain’s Lock it seemed. Because of the width of the towpath, there was no place to turn the pickup truck around. They had told me to be careful, but had made no attempt to stop me. The kid mentioned that they were not responsible if I hurt myself.

Back at Swain’s lock, as I approached the sign for the blocked trail, I had a decision to make. I could stay on the trail, or I could try to get to the main road and ride along the road. Riding along the road would have added a couple of miles to the ride, and it would have also involved riding up and down decent slopes on the side roads to get to the main road. It would have also been more dangerous because of the traffic on the road. Besides, I was tired after having ridden more than 30 miles at that point. It did not take too long for me to decide to stay on the trail and face the consequences of my action if I encountered somebody who objected.

At that point I was returning from a ride all the way out to Fletchers Cove. The highlight of this ride was the stop to see the swallowtail butterflies feasting in the morning sun on the milkweed growing beside the waters of the canal.Crossing the damaged section of the trail earlier in the morning on my way out had been an adventure in itself. I could ride my bike for only short sections at a time. I had to carry my bike over tree limbs laying across the trail, and walk under fallen branches balanced over me. I even had to carry my bike off the trail through the woods to get past one section. Fortunately folks had created a path off the trail in this section. (The trail must have been blocked for at least a little while at this point in time for this to happen!) I carried my bike past the park ranger who was sitting in his front-end loader on the trail. He did not stop me. Perhaps he remembered me later in the day when I encountered him again, which was why he let me get by that time.

The destruction was extensive. Trees were fallen all over the place. The trail had also been washed away in a few sections, as if the canal had overflowed. I kept going.

When I started the ride earlier that morning, I had met a person who had just finished his bike ride. He had warned me about the fallen trees, but had apparently gotten through to the other side, where the trail was completely clear. He did not say anything to discourage me from my plan to ride towards the city.

The strange thing about what I saw on the trail was the localized nature of the damage. I have a hunch that some kind of twister must have touched down during a storm that had taken place a few days earlier. The funny thing is that I was not aware of the extent of the storm when it happened even though the trail is not too far from home. I wondered how things might have looked on the trail when the storm was actually happening. The power of nature is awesome.

And that is the end of this little tale told backwards!

Hah!

Chasing the Deer

The scene unfolded during our Sunday morning walk along the C&O Canal.

We were headed back from Swains Lock to Pennyfield Lock along the towpath (the trail). The canal, which happens to have water flowing in it in these parts, was to our right, and to our left was vegetation and a somewhat sharp drop off to the Potomac river. The only people on the trail in front of us were a middle aged couple who walking towards us from the distance.

We heard a commotion behind us. After initially ignoring it, I turned back to see that there were two deer running on the towpath in our direction, being followed by two bicyclists. One of the deer was bigger than then other, probably a parent. Even though the deer had seen us, they keep coming, veering neither left or right. They were scared by the cyclists, and also of what lay on both sides of the trail.

We turned to face the deer. I feared a possible collision and I moved to protect my broken ribs. The deer finally stopped not too far from us. The bigger one then jumped into the trees and bushes on its left, towards the river, and the young one followed. The bicyclists went by.

As the people coming towards us got closer, the bigger deer crashed out of the bushes beside the river and ran across the trail into the canal. It swam across to the other side of the canal and climbed up the hill beside the canal. You could barely see it behind the trees. There was no sign of the smaller deer, but we knew that it was still on the other side of the trail, separated from the deer that was probably its parent.

As the folks approaching us went by, the little deer jumped out of the bushes beside the river in front of them. It saw the people approaching. It took off in the opposite direction along the trail, heading back towards where it had originally come from, and away from the other deer. The folks who are now walking behind the sprinting deer are pantomiming and trying signal to the deer to cross the canal to be with the other one. The deer is in a panic, neither can it understand human communications. Go back and get your young one, we ourselves say to the bigger deer who is on the other side of the canal. Of course, we are not speaking the deer’s language.

We did not wait to see how the drama of the lost deer finally played out. I would not be surprised if the two deer eventually found each other. While they might be considered creatures without intelligence by some human beings, animals have capabilities that would surprise many of us. They are not necessarily limited by the kinds of senses that we human beings normally use. (Check this out!)

The places that we frequent during the weekends allow us to experience things that may be considered out of the ordinary, things that we do not see during the normal course of the day in our usual surroundings. It may simply be that the turtles are hanging out on the logs, or the great blue heron are fishing, or that the wren is singing on a tree as you pass by. You just need to keep your senses open and a different world opens up to you. But our experience last Sunday was unique even by those standards.

Take it Easy

Take It easy, take it easy
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels
drive you crazy….………………………..The Eagles

The constant jangling of the metal handlebar basket as I bounce along on my bike on the towpath is something that I have gotten used to. The sound is fading into the background as if I were wearing some noise cancelling headphones, but it is only what is left of my middle-aged rattled brain doing its thing! With regular six to seven hours of steady biking all by myself day after day, starting in the relative cool of the early mornings, and continuing through the middle of these hot and humid summer days; with the legs beating a regular rhythm on the pedals without end; with the steady concentration of the ride and your thoughts only broken up the occasional scenic stops, the snack breaks, and the infrequent interaction with folks you come across on the trail; it is all something that is becoming second-nature to me.

It has gotten to the point where I can recover from my long rides and do the same thing the next day without feeling the ill-effects of the previous days’ efforts. It does not matter if I had been riding on a flat surface on the towpath or if I have overcome some challenging slopes on the Virginia side of the river or on the Capital Crescent Trail the previous day. So I think I am about as ready as I can be for the long ride at the end of August.

I have biked all the way to Reston, VA, near Dulles airport, on the W&OD trail. This picture was taken at the place where I stopped for lunch and turned back to return home.
I would eventually like to bike to the end of the W&OD trail. It is 45 miles long.

The picture below shows the scene at Lock 7 in the morning during a different ride. It is still cool in the morning at this point and I am riding towards DC. I eventually crossed the Potomac on the Key Bridge and took the Arlington loop.
This is Swain’s Lock later the same day as I was returning to Riley’s Lock. The heat had built up by this time.
The picture below was taken at the end of the same ride. The kids are on Seneca Creek near Riley’s lock. As I mentioned in another blog, there are kids everywhere!
This picture was taken early in the morning the next day at the start of another ride. The location is north of Taylor’s Landing near Sharpsburg, MD.
As I was getting my bike out of the car, a few vans full of kids and equipment drove into the parking area. When I inquired if I could help by moving my car out of the way, one of the adults told me not to bother. They were simply dropping the kids and their bikes off so that they could ride the trail, and the vehicles were going to pick them up at the other end of the ride. I like kids, but I did make sure to start my ride going in the opposite direction of where they were headed.

I passed the Dam 4 cave, and then Dam 4 itself, a couple of miles north of Taylors Landing.

During this ride I biked all the way to Williamsport, MD, before turning back. There is a lot of work going on in the park in Williamsport and I had to navigate my way past a dump truck that was blocking the trail. The National Park Service is trying to get the canal in that section set up so that they can give rides to visitors in replica canal boats. On my way back, at Taylor’s Landing, I did come across a group of four older women who were riding from Cumberland to Washington, DC, over five days. They had actually roughed it out the previous night by staying in one of the lock houses. It was unusual to see such a group on the trail.

Here is a recording to the song mentioned in this blog.