Great Falls Park is part of the National Park System but from all the lists I can find, it is not a named National Park. What other areas have this designation, I don’t know! But the Senior Lifetime National Park Service pass worked perfectly. The National Park Service protected the land in 1960 and Great Falls Park opened to the public in 1966.
The NPS website is not very informative but wikipedia of course will tell you everything starting from 1785.
Rick and Jim rented us quite the machine, the Ford Expedition, and we 7 traveled in comfort and style.
Great Falls Park is 45 minutes or so, totally depending on traffic, from DC. It’s very very lovely. I was planning to go as far as I could with enough umph left to get back, and that worked great thanks to everyone else who helped me over the hump of the first view point and at the end too. Boulders! Ankle grabbing rocks! Roots! But mostly it was groomed trails. I turned back at the place where there would be extended scrambling required while the gang moved on.
Welcome to Great Falls Park
Rick took this near the end of the trail, where the old canal bed would flow into the Potomac.
Ice CREAM!
Since we were driving around in what could be mistaken for a pope-mobile, we decided to swing by the “The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Episcopal Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral or National Cathedral.” There was scaffolding around one side and it was very expensive to get in, so we enjoyed the grounds and headed back into the soul-crushing DC traffic.
Some snaps out the window on the way home.
The only info I could find on this guy: “Mother, a mural at 37 New York Avenue NE, was painted by Philadelphia-based artist NOSÉGO in 2019.”
We got home on the late side after having gone for a big grocery run, and omg there were 7 bags of groceries from Whole Foods on the porch. After calls made and emails exchanged it turned out to be the previous tenant who forgot to change their delivery address. The store and the property manager said ‘it’s yours now’. Unfortunately it had been on the porch for at least 5 hours so we had to pitch a lot of it. Still, it was like Grocery Christmas.
