Muddying the Waters

Springtime in the cemetery

The best-laid plans of mice and language learners. As none of you no doubt recall, last Christmas Eve I drove out to do some hiking at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville, Virginia only to discover that the boardwalk there was in a state of disrepair, making it unable for me to start out on the trail due to the muddy, wet conditions. Fast forward to Easter eve, and my return to the park to try again. With spring in full bloom, and the park noted for its flowers, I figured correctly that the boardwalk would have been repaired by now. What I hadn't taken into account was the effect that Friday evening's heavy rainfall in the DMV region would have on the condition of the trail. Read on...:

Posing with my copy of AMC's Best Day Hikes Near Washington, D.C. Seven years after purchasing it, I've completed (or at least attempted - see here for one notorious failure) all but three of the fifty hikes described in the book:

The waters along the path were teeming with tadpoles:

The park is famous locally for its bluebells, and a lot of visitors came out on Saturday to see the flowers despite the muddy conditions:

The mud got progressively...er, muddier as I made my way along the path, but I trudged on, determined to do the hike. However, 35 minutes into what I had planned to be a two-hour walk (at the two-hour mark I was going to turn around and retrace my steps back to the start) I came across a section of the trail that was completely inundated. Without proper footwear (i.e. waders), I had no choice but to turn back. At least I probably wasn't the only one who would have had to yesterday:

On the way back I was startled by a very loud sound coming from the forest behind me. I turned around to see a tree falling over. Now I know for a fact that a tree falling in the woods does indeed make a sound - in this case, much like a gunshot (there is at least one shooting range in the area).

With my hiking plans on hold but not wanting to waste a beautiful April day, I decided to take a drive through Virginia's beautiful horse country. On the way out of the park I passed by a Vietnamese Buddhist temple:

I  soon found myself in the Manassas Battlefield National Battlefield Park, so I pulled off the road, parked the car and got out to have another look at the Stone Bridge (which I'd seen previously back in the summer of 2013 during a noisy cicada outbreak), where the first shots of the First Battle of Manassas were fired on July 21, 1861. The bridge itself was blown up by the Confederates; what stands today was completed in 1884:

The Bull Run, from which the battles took their names:

I was able to get some walking in, thanks to the 1.4 mile (2.3 kilometers)-long Stone Bridge loop trail:

Having hiked the main battlefield six years ago, I skipped the other sites in the area and continued my drive through the countryside on the hella scenic John Mosby Highway. Driving solo while using my phone's GPS for navigation meant I couldn't stop to take photos as I passed through charming villages such as Aldie and Middleburg, though I did manage this shot in the latter while waiting at a stoplight:

Somewhere near Marshall I had to wait not once, but twice (at separate railroad crossings), for the same freight train to pass by:

On the way back home, I made a quick stop at the Stone House, another First Battle of Manassas site that I'd visited six years ago:

Reading my blog post from back then, I see that I mentioned how two wounded Union soldiers had carved their names into the floorboards, and of how I inexplicably neglected to take photos of them. This time I partially corrected that oversight:

I climbed the short hill behind the Stone House, and looked over the battlefields to the north...:

...and the south:

Back in the present day - last Thursday afternoon I introduced my daughter to Ethiopian cuisine, taking her out for lunch at the EYO Restaurant and Sports Bar in nearby Bailey's Crossroads (I tried to get my wife to join us, but she said she would rather wait until we get to Addis Ababa. Shu-E claims the food would be more "authentic", but I suspect she doesn't want to have to eat a meal with her hands until she has no other choice). We ordered the vegetarian platter and the lega tibs. Amber said afterward she was satisfied with the meal, though it was something she couldn't eat "all the time":

The area where the restaurant is located is called Skyline, and is home to a number of Ethiopian businesses:

As our family isn't religious (and our daughter is too old to be hunting for dyed eggs, though she did get a chocolate bunny), this Easter was no different than most recent Sundays. While Amber and Shu-E were out in the afternoon (for Chinese class and grocery shopping, respectively), I took a walk through the local cemetery. What a beautiful place to be resurrected, except if the bodies here returned to life, it would probably be as part of a zombie apocalypse and not the Rapture:

Of course, I can never get away from Amharic (none of you will remember that a month ago I took a photo of this same headstone before it was put over the grave):

For Easter dinner, the three of us went to this trendy Asian food court in Annandale, popular with hipsters and young families. Neither I nor my wife were too impressed with the fare and the atmosphere, though Amber liked her tonkatsu:

Being an Orthodox church, Easter in Ethiopia falls on the following Sunday. Our teacher has promised to take us to an Ethiopian Orthodox house of worship on the Orthodox Good Friday this upcoming week, so stay tuned...