Leslie and David's Wanderings: 5 October 2022 Falls and the Mall

Friday, October 14, 2022

5 October 2022 Falls and the Mall

The ruminants of hurricane IAN are slowly moving east. We took the opportunity to go to the east and west sides of the Great Falls of the Potomac. On the east side we saw a fox in the parking lot before crossing over the C&O Canal and the locks. The C&O was built in the 1840s in competition with the railroads to open trade between the Ohio River and the Chesapeake Bay. The railroad eventually one due to speed and cost, but the C&O provided some good competition for a while. We have been seeing bits and pieces of the canal during our travels. A spur of the canal went all the way to the Capitol build and was used to move building materials to the site but eventually was filled in to form the Mall. The river was running pretty good with all the recent rain from Ian. Leslie used to come here with her dog Abby to watch the kayakers shoot the falls. As we stood there, a military helicopter came thundering by us at low level and disappearing around the bend. It came thundering back a few minutes later heading towards DC. We headed back to the Wanderer to have an early dinner. We then walked up to the bus station to meet up with our tour bus. The tour took us into DC just as the sun was setting. Our guide was a local historian and filled us in with a lot of history trivia. The clouds from Ian cleared off and we had a beautiful sunset that provided perfect lighting of the Capitol Building and back lit the Washington Monument. We then were taken to the White House, Jefferson Memorial, Roosevelt Memorial, the tidal pool, MLK Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, and World War 2 Memorial. They look beautiful in the lighting and made for some dramatic photos.