C&O Canal National Historical Park

Long time no post. My apologies. It was a busy past week and a half. My darling hubby graduated with his PhD this past week and both of our families were in town for the happy celebration, which kept us very busy. Memorial Day weekend is this weekend and as much as I want to go camping, I won't simply because everybody and their mother go camping. Instead, we will probably do some local hikes, which I plan on highlighting in my next few posts.

Today I'm posting on a great local park, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. This park actually runs for approximately 200 miles along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from Cumberland, Maryland to Georgetown in Washington D.C., with 6 visitor centers along its length. The visitor center that we always go to is the Great Falls Tavern visitor center in Potomac, Maryland. This place is always busy on the weekends with people strolling along the canal, bikers, and hikers. Our favorite hike to do here is actually a very challenging one, Billy Goat Trail Section A. You are literally scrambling over rocks the 1.7 miles of the trail. It is a wonderful workout with an amazing view of the Potomac River. I'm including some pictures from the very first time I hiked this trail.

Hubby and I each in front of the C&O canal before our hike.

You have to walk along the canal for a little way to get to the trail head. We always see herons in the canal.

A couple of shots of the Potomac from the trail beside the canal.

Once we started the Billy Goat Trail, we were greeted by this little amphibian.

A view of the Potomac from the trail.

Hubby going off the trail for a closer view.

Smile Hubby!!

Me. If you look to the right of the picture, you will see a blue blaze painted on the boulder. Yep, you are hiking on boulders. It's pretty awesome.

An awesome little marshy habitat along the trail

 More views of the Potomac.

Some flowers.

More pics of the river.

Your eyes don't deceive you, you have to scale up this wall of rock at a point in the trail. Or down it if you happen to start the trail from the other end. I would recommend scaling up instead of down.

Hubby and I taking a quick break.

The river was high on this particular day, requiring one to wade thru water at one point. Normally, this is a sandy outcropping from the river instead of a scene from a jungle adventure movie.

The calm of the canal again after our hike.

One of the dams associated with the locks on the canal.

A blue tailed skink!

The Great Falls of the Potomac River are located in this area. You can get to the overlook via the Olmstead Island bridges. This isn't it, just some smaller ones on the way to the bigger ones.

Still not there yet . . .

Here they are. The water was high, so they aren't as dramatic as they usually are. It is still quite a site to see!!

So, if you are in the D.C. area and like a challenging hike, this is the place to do it. Entrance fees for the park are $5.00, or if you own the Annual Pass, you just flash that and you are in. Now, if you aren't physically able to hike something like this, there is a more moderate trail known as the Gold Mine Loop, which meanders thru lush greenery. There is also the easy and flat, though sometimes muddy, River Trail. One day I hope to get some images of those trails.  My dream is to hike the entire length of the canal. There are several campgrounds along the way if one wanted to do a thing like this. People are also known to bike the entire length of it. Either way, it's a park that we really enjoy and go to over and over again throughout the year.

Here is the website for this park http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm

Day 9-Road Trip to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park

Well, its been a while since I've written. Unfortunately, the reason I haven't written recently is because my grandmother passed away. I had to return back home to Louisiana for the funeral. While I was down there, we were sorting through old photographs that my grandmother had. One thing that I saw were lots of pictures of my grandparents with my aunts and uncles on camping trips. My dad's family was large, he is one of eight. The only way they could afford to go on vacation was to go camping. I got my love of the outdoors from my dad, and I hope to pass along this love to my kids one day.

Ok, so Day 9 of our trip. We packed up our car so we could head over to Canyon Village, where we would be staying the night. We took the road that cut across the park, and along the way we decided to hike a trail. We chose to hike to Grebe Lake, which was a 6 mile round trip hike. This hike took us through part of the park that had been burned by the fires in the 1980's. We didn't see much wildlife besides chipmunks. Once we made it to the lake, we stayed only for a few minutes thanks to the swarms of mosquitoes. 

Grebe Lake

We drove to our campsite and pitched our tent and cooked some lunch. By the way, the Easy Mac cups 

 that are supposed to be microwaved to not trans late well to the stove top.

We decided to drive north of the campsite. It was a beautiful drive.

As we were driving near Antelope Creek, we saw some black bears near the side of the road!!

We continued our drive and some some more volcanic rocks, the columns on the cliff side in the next two pictures.

We made it to the petrified tree, which was a redwood to be exact. There were a lot of people there, and kids trying to climb the gate around the tree.

After we saw the tree, we went over to Tower Falls.

After checking out the falls, we decided to drive back to camp.

When we got back to camp, I decided to play lumberjack and chop some wood.

Here is our campsite.

Next time, our last day in the park.