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A kayaker heads out on the Potomac
Great Urban Adventure
In DC of All Places
Story & Photos by Marilyn Bauer
After a week's worth of meetings held in a windowless room on the outskirts of town, I was more than ready to head for home. But times being what they are, I was asked to stay in Washington, DC a couple more days to take advantage of the discount in airfare that comes with a Saturday night stay.
There I was in Herendon, VA, checked into a service-challenged Hyatt in an industrial park accessible only through a labyrinth of toll roads or the beltway parking lot. I wanted to get outdoors, get active and get some fresh air.
I wanted to move, baby.
Like every visitor to the district, I had done the monuments and museums, but never explored the city's lesser-known national parks. Great Falls with its Class IV rapids, rock climbing and extensive trail system; Rock Creek set center-city with riding stables, tennis courts and 30 picnic areas dappled over 2,000 acres; Roosevelt Island, a wildlife preserve rising out of the Potomac River; the path along the old C & O canal, where mules hauling an ersatz barge fight for right of way with joggers, bladers and bikers; all were within my reach. All promised urban adventure.
Great Falls
From Herendon, Great Falls Park is a straight shot from the Reston Parkway to the Georgetown Pike, where historic landmark signs and national park markers make it easy to find the entrance. The park is the region's premier rock-climbing area with 77-foot cliffs rising over the waters of the Potomac as they rush through the narrows at Mather Gorge.
The falls cascade over hard-edged promontories of granite rock, pounding down to whitewater eddies and the put-in for kayaks and rafts. One hundred thirty-four thousand cubic feet of water per second descend 76 feet in a series of rapids best navigated by experienced whitewater boaters
"You need to be a strong intermediate paddler or above," advised Jesse Reynolds, lead ranger at the park. "This is not the place to come as a beginner. There are extremely strong currents both in the main river channel and in the eddies. It creates some very confused water."
»Continued on Next Page
The grave consequences of skipping your trip to Dunkin' Donuts . . . See Page 5
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For the second time in four years, naturaltraveler.com has won the Canadian Tourism Commission’s Northern Lights Award for Internet Reporting, this time for my article entitled: "Newfoundland, Where Landscape Defines Literature." It is another in a series of journalism awards writers for the site have won over the past few years. I am particularly proud of this award because the article calls attention to the kind of innovative, in-depth coverage, by my fellow journalists, that defines naturaltraveler.com. It also represents the level of planning and cooperation that goes into articles for the website. Beginning with the premise that many people choose a destination on the basis of a beautifully wrought piece of fiction, I found a wonderful example in Newfoundland and worked closely with Gillian Marx of Newfoundland & Labrador Media Relations, who was indispensible in setting up the interviews with the world-class authors who are quoted in the article. I feel I share this award with Gillian and her colleagues.
If you’d like to read the article, click on: Newfoundland, Where Landscape Defines Literature
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