Great Falls, Clara Barton and the Potomac Heritage NST

12-AUG-2007

Washington, D.C. and Vicinity


Wow, so many rules for posting that I can see why George refuses to join. What about language? I heard mention of friends and family so I assume that some sanitation is necessary? Anyhow, I am getting off track here; my mind tends to wander in my advanced age.

After moving Stefan's thousand tiny boxes of random stuff (Kelly, all of your stuff was really nice and light as feathers:) up three flights of stairs in the dog days of August on the previous day, we approached this NPU excursion with some trepidation. Contrary to our usual 8 am sharp itineraries, we did not actually set foot in a National Park site until noonish (Stefan made damned sure that nothing was going to go wrong with that rental truck return process). Also, we banned hiking from the list of activities and agreed to proceed at a leisurely pace.

I found it appropriate that our first stop was Clara Barton NHS because I am pretty certain that Stefan's moving day qualified as a natural disaster (okay, it really wasn't that bad but it seemed that way at the time). We arrived at Clara's doorstep in the middle of the 11 am tour so we decided to detour across the parking lot to another NPS site, Glen Echo Park. This has to be the only National Park unit dedicated to protecting a former amusement park. We tracked down the stamps using the pedestrian mode of our GPS (an impressive feat, I must say) and rushed back for the 12 pm tour at Clara Barton.

When we returned to Clara Barton, our tour was slightly delayed as the ranger went to her car and fed her kids lunch or something like that. When she returned, she proceeded to tell us everything that was ever known about Clara Barton in exhausting detail. As usual with our tours of obscure historic sites, our tour group consisted of us and one or more elderly persons. The token elderly person in this group played the part as usual (i.e.-asked a bunch of questions; eyed the three of us suspiciously) until her cell phone (yes, elderly people apparently have cell phones) went off with a deafening ringtone (yes, elderly people apparently download ringtones) and she proceeded to answer it in the middle of the ranger's tour. The Clara Barton House, in addition to being historically significant as a headquarters of the Red Cross, was also very interesting in architectural terms because of its dual functionality as a residence and supply warehouse. At the end of the tour, we were treated to a list of stamps for the DC area published by Dandy Dan the Ranger Man, as close as there is to a celebrity in stamping circles.

From here, it was off to Great Falls Park. On the Maryland side of the Potomac, we took a short trail along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (part of the C & O Canal NHP) to a falls overlook. Along the way, we witnessed a dog taking the most massive and foulest defecation ever recorded for Canis domesticus. At the falls, Stefan fell for my falling-rail trick (to explain, the rails were less than secure considering that they were separating us from raging rapids that had claimed over 100 lives in recent years). George was too overcome by his fetish for running water photography to even notice the decrepit rails. After hiking through some sort of rare plant community only found on islands in the Potomac, we came to the overlook to the Virginia side. For some reason, Stefan was all geeked up about the number of great blue herons around the falls which is odd considering that I am supposed to be the avi-phile of the group.

Our attempt to collect 15+ stamps at the George Washington Memorial Parkway (another unit we 'visited' on this trip) headquarters at Turkey Run was unfruitful as it was closed on weekends. Undaunted, we drove up the Potomac to the Virginia side of Great Falls Park. This began our foray into the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail (to be continued...). We enjoyed the superior view of the falls from the overlook on this side of the Potomac and proceeded on to Riverbend Park, the site of our second Potomac Heritage stamp. It is here that Stefan revealed his man-crush on blue-necked woodpeckers (aka, belted kingfishers), yet another reason for me to suspect that he is a closet bird-lover. Although this account may be disputed by other parties privy to inside information, I will insist that I politely and persistently insisted that a stamp existed at this site until the clerk agreed to search for one. Lo and behold, he produced a stamper, still in the box and uninked. We broke it in and headed off for Harper's Ferry.

Harper's Ferry was our Waterloo on this trip. Slowed by a stop at the world's most expensive Arby's (where a Coke is $3 but they only fill it half full) and a boneheaded GPS screwup by me, we arrived at Harper's Ferry just past the 5pm closing time. Despite the fact that we were unable to acquire any stamps, we walked around the town and along the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers in an effort to begin earning the stamp for our return visit.