Great Falls on the Potomac
"So," vvalkyri brightly suggested while we were driving north, "want to see Great Falls?"
A detour for scenic natural beauty on a crisp autumn day with a wonderful lady friend? Sounds good to me! :-)
As always, click on thumbnails for full images
I had no idea Great Falls existed before vvalkyri suggested we go visit them, on the way up after a lunch meeting recalcitranttoy for the first time in person (yay!), despite having been to Washington DC almost two dozen times in the last ten years. Where the Appalachian Piedmont gives way to the Atlantic Coastal plain, the Potomac river is funneled into a narrow gorge of rock, turning the placid river into rushing waters. Here at Great Falls, the Potomac stumbles down a series of successive falls, plunging a total of seven stories in height through a series of cascading channels.
From the Maryland side a wide trail leads to a series of bridges which span a succession of gorges, through forests perched on spits of rock, leading out to the vista over the Great Falls themselves. The scale of the rapids can be gauged by the full-size trees on the far side; stunningly, there have been historical floods that have filled the entire gorge up to the level of the trees at top. Even now, the scene is impressive, made more so by the frame of autumn leaves and sky.
But along the wilder river runs the placid waters of the old Cumberland and Ohio canal. A dream originally envisioned by the founding fathers, it runs from the Chesapeake at Washington DC all the way to Cumberland. I had actually strolled the shores of the same canal at Georgetown with hoya99 years earlier, years before rasfwr-j and all that came from it. And now with vvalkyri we explored the locks and canals and friendly wildlife along the wide, sandy trails. Volunteers in period costume escorted real, working canal boats up and down the canal waters, and exhibits captured the lost history of the canal's brief heyday.
The trip to Great Falls was very neat for many reasons. But above all, it was another chance to share a comfortable afternoon exploring natural wonders with a merry friend. :-)