New Bike

This fine specimen of a mountain bike is Bob's latest toy. He test rode this same bike in Colorado last summer. It's a Specialized Stumpjumper with all the latest bells and whistles. Bike dealers provide shops with "test" bikes which they rent to customers, and they purposely paint them a color that is not available for sale. This is a test bike, so you may not see many just like this one out on the trails!

Spring in Alexandria

I walked over to Washington's River Farm recently (about 35 minutes from home). I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know the history of the place, but I imagine from the name that it involves George Washington. It's a large piece of land on the Potomac, with an old house surrounded by gardens & meadows. This is the house. It looks nice and everything but upon close inspection it is in need of maintenance...


This is the meadow that leads to the river. It's hard to get an idea of distance, but it is a little ways down there, with a small drop-off to the water. The next pic is of the large tree to the right, which may help give perspective.

Being the cool garden that it is, there are lots of interesting things to look at. This is a bench made out of two large rocks - perhaps from the New River Gorge - and a wooden seat spanning them.
Beautiful wrought iron, whimsical lawn ornaments and a "green" gardening shed make this local gem a treat to walk to.

Yes, we're still here!

Sorry to those of you who check this regularly... we've been distracted lately. So let's see, in the past month we've both been busy with work - Bob especially - although Anna's training schedule has been surprisingly full. We've been biking a lot locally. We did our 42 mile ride to Bethesda last week, on a 70 degree sunny day. The weather hasn't settled into a spring pattern yet. There are cold rainy days mixed in with warm sunny ones.

The picture above is from a trip to Shenandoah National Park at the end of March. That's big meadows where they must've done a controlled burn. We camped on opening day, and it was crowded with ironically unprepared boy scouts, who were drenched to the bone after the hard rains. Another view of Big Meadows:

We hiked that day down Dark Hollow Falls. You gotta love this sign... our tax dollars at work!

We hiked down a fire road that was new territory for us and came upon the Cave Cemetery, which contained lots of unmarked pieces of rock for headstones from back in the late 1800's. There were also modern day gravestones. Here's an interesting wooden marker.


The next day we did our standard hike up to Mary's Rock. For those who remember it, the Panorama restaurant building is gone. Apparently the place was full of asbestos. Anyway, it was very foggy. There was no view (but we've seen it many many many times). We went for the exercise and the close-up views!

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Other than that, we've been busting butt on the yard. I must say it's looking quite nice. And we've been working on our sidewalk/driveway/fence improvement project. We "shook-out" the sea kayaks and related gear last weekend on a nice trip to Pohick Bay (on the Potomac). Used to be you could count on seeing bald eagles there, but we think they've been overrun by the ospreys! Lot's of blue heron also. We need to remember the camera next time!