River Walk

Since recovering from pneumonia, I’ve been getting my strength back with various exercises and walking.  On Sunday, one of the few sunny days we’ve had in ages, my friend Carolyn and I took a walk down to the Key Bridge and across into Georgetown.

It looks almost wild here. Almost. All you have to do is look a little to the east…

The Georgetown waterfront has been under development for some time.  It used to have a few boathouses and a lot industrial warehouses and storage, as well as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.  Now there’s a park along the river and it’s a really nice walk.

And there’s the Watergate, the Kennedy Center, and the Washington Monument peering over them. Some architecture critic said that the Watergate was a wedding cake and the Kennedy Center was the box it came in…

I wanted to check out the skating rink at Washington Harbor.  A friend of mine had taken a group of Girl Scouts there before Christmas and I didn’t even know there was a rink there.  It was in use on Sunday, but woe to those who fell:  there was a lot of melt and large puddles.  I like skating on cheesy ice, but not when you’re running through little ponds.  It’s supposed to get cold and maybe even snow this weekend.  That would make for good skating.

Or look a little to the west and you get the Rosslyn skyline. In the 19th century, Rosslyn was full of bars and bordellos.

The thing I like about walking the river is that I know it from rowing and kayaking and looking at it from the shore is a different view.  And there are always things to see.  We spotted a Black Crowned Night Heron resting in a thicket. I had to look up what it was, though another bystander said he thought it was a “night heron.”  So there are surprises, if you’re alert.

I was transfixed by this. Carolyn was momentarily appalled when I stopped, thinking I was going to look at the tourist paintings stacked up in front of it. Nope. And no, I didn’t take a picture of them…

We were also surprised by an art installation on the plaza.  It was made of piping, clamps, and nylon cord, some of which was stretchy like a bungee cord, but smaller.  It was colorful and sort of like walking through alleys between buildings.

Carolyn takes a gander through the alleyway…

I speculated that it was lighted at night by solar cell.  There were devices in each structure that looked like they could be storing up daylight for nighttime use.

And I take a look at the view out…

We had a look at the rink, did a little people watching, and headed back.  The sun was already getting lower in the sky.  It was nice to be out, stretching my legs.  Carolyn, who wears a device of some sort (is it an Apple Watch?) said we’d walked nearly 6 miles.  Now if I can just keep it up…

Back across the beautiful bridge we went…