What, another blog post, so soon after the last one?! I thought there wasn't anything to do in Arlington while on Authorized Departure. Well, there isn't...much. Except that this morning, on our 101st day back in the U.S. while waiting for the word to return to Ethiopia, I took a walk. A long one. As the very tiny handful of regular blog readers and Facebook friends are aware, at least once a week I go for a lengthy stroll. Last night, after the local weather forecast called for the region's oppressive humidity to return from Thursday, I decided today (Wednesday) would be a good time to head out. I was out the front door of the apartment building just before 0800 hours, and proceeded along my usual route - joining up with the Custis Trail and following it down to the Potomac, where it connects to the Mount Vernon Trail, and where I then headed south, past Theodore Roosevelt Island and crossing under the Theodore Roosevelt and Arlington Memorial Bridges.
Each week I try to extend my walk one-way by at least five minutes, so this week I stopped at the 95-minute mark and found myself at the Navy-Merchant Marine Memorial, which for some reason reminded me of the home run sculpture at Marlins Park (Google it):
Panting on the Potomac. Humid it wasn't, but hot it was. By the time I returned home later in the morning it was already 88°F (31°C). As I write this, the temperature in Washington is 90°F, marking the 20th consecutive day the thermometer has reached that threshold. The record is 21, likely to be matched and exceeded this week:
Usually, I backtrack along the Potomac to Rosslyn, then return home via the long uphill climb along Wilson Boulevard. This morning, however, I opted for a different return route, hence the blog post. I crossed under the George Washington Memorial Parkway...:
...to the Columbia Island Marina, situated under the flight path from Reagan National Airport:
Seen across the appropriately-named Pentagon Lagoon Yacht Basin is the Pentagon:
I headed towards the LBJ Memorial Grove, dedicated to the 36th president in 1976:
Considering his mixed historical legacy (landmark civil rights legislation vs. the Vietnam War), I'm surprised there's any sort of memorial to him in the D.C. area. Apparently, the grove is in recognition of his signing the Clean Water Act of 1965. In those days the Potomac was a contaminated cesspool; I wouldn't go swimming in it today, but it has been significantly cleaned up in the succeeding decades:
Crossing the Boundary Channel:
The channel gets its name as it defines the border between the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Virginia:
Back in Virginia, I continued walking, crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge and its vaguely fascist-looking eagles:
This gentleman was performing a strange stretching ritual in front of a memorial to Navy Seabees. I wanted to film what he was doing but...:
...I was interrupted by several police motorcycles that arrived to stop traffic leading up to Arlington Cemetery:
I asked one of the police officers what was happening, and he told me it was for someone who had been "killed in action", which put a damper on what had been a fine morning up to that point. A sad reminder of the seemingly permanent state of war this country has been in since 2001:
I walked along the perimeter of the cemetery and its silent rows of white headstones (see photo at the start of this post), before cutting through the Marine Corps Memorial to reach Arlington Boulevard and the final, long leg back to Ballston:
This morning's all-important stat lines:
Time - 3 hours 21 minutes
Number of steps, according to Fitbit: 18,872
Length of walk, according to a website that converts steps to miles: 8.9 miles (14.3 kilometers)
Next week's plan is to go for 100 minutes, and to see how close I can get to Gravelly Point. The weather, however, might have other plans - the current forecast for next week calls for temperatures as high as 99°F (37°C) and thunderstorms. Oh, the humidity...
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