But I'm getting ahead of myself. Since I last wrote, two visitors have come and gone - ADC's post-doc B was succeeded almost immediately by my friend TB. He timed his visit - on sick leave due to carpal tunnel syndrome - for a long weekend: the children had Friday the 16th off school, due to a teachers' professional day. We decided to take advantage of the good weather and visited Black Hill Regional Park, which is a well-known butterfly hotspot, very close by in Montgomery County. TB is very keen on butterflies, and was able to identify several varieties in flight that we would have probably lumped together or been unable to identify with our pocket guide. As soon as we arrived we realised we had come to the right place: not only was there a butterfly garden, the Monarch butterfly there had been tagged, something we had never seen before. We all wondered how this was done ... At the end of our hike, and after lunch, we went back to the visitor centre, which had been closed when we first arrived, and the guide there explained that they brought larvae in from the garden, and provided them with food inside a special enclosure until they underwent metamorphosis (see The Very Hungry Caterpillar for details; this is not ADC's favourite children's book for nothing). Once the butterflies emerge from the chrysalis, they are immediately tagged on the underside of the wing. We were very lucky to see them so late in the year; usually they have all migrated south by now.
I should define our hike at Black Hill Park as a stroll, really, as we went quite slowly. Usually I trail behind because I want to stop and identify all the plants, and I was very pleased that TB proved to be very cooperative, since it is much easier to identify plants with four eyes rather than just two. In addition to seeing Monarch, common sulphur and painted lady butterflies, and a cormorant on the lake, we saw two kinds of oak, American elm, yellow poplar, black gum, red maple (the kind that doesn't produce syrup), flowering dogwood (Maryland's state tree), loblolly pine and possibly a crabapple tree. These are the most common trees in Maryland and Virginia, and we saw almost all of them again in George Washington National Park, but in much more advanced fall colours.
We continued from Black Hill Park to Harpers Ferry, not realising that October 18 was the anniversary of John Brown's raid on the armoury there. As a result, there were very many tourists there, and it took us a long time to find parking - we actually left the town and came back in again after our search took us too far away. The weather turned as we were driving, and the first thing I did once we got out of the car was to buy a warm top. As I refuse to buy hoodies with place names on them, I was lucky to find a technical top, which actually filled a gap in my wardrobe, and which I wore all of the past weekend, too. Harpers Ferry was a very interesting place. It's not just John Brown who is part of its heritage; this is also the site where Lewis and Clark gathered their equipment before setting out on their expedition to survey the West. The ferry is the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, and today marks a meeting of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia (Harpers Ferry itself is in West Virginia). We walked partway across the bridge, but did not have time before dark to attempt any of the trails. This is also considered to be the point where canals gave way to the railroad, since in the race between the two to reach the Ohio Valley, the railroad went through Harpers Ferry several years before the canal did.
Next day, Saturday, we went to the Air & Space museum. In our previous visit, we stuck to Air, and this time, we went to Space, looking at exhibits mainly about rockets and the moon landings. We have begun watching Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson as a result. I must admit that this is not my favourite subject; I am not so interested in manned spaceflight, although I do find cosmology and the stars themselves fascinating. I am enjoying Cosmos more than I enjoy that part of the Smithsonian. When we left the museum, a sun telescope had been set up on the pavement outside, and everyone else enjoyed looking at sunspots and the solar winds. As usual, I saw my eye, like in the Thurber story. I don't have this problem with normal telescopes, but I do have difficulty focusing microscopes - clearly I made the right choice in specialising in the humanities.We continued to a neighbourhood called Capitol Hill, to the east of the actual Capitol. We had an excellent Salvadorean light lunch, and then wandered around the streets, looking at the gardens, the different kinds of houses, and the early Halloween decorations, which of course have become more extensive ever since. This really needs to be accompanied by pictures, and I will add some once ADC completes his photojournal.
TB stayed with us through Thursday morning, and "did" Washington quite thoroughly, spending Monday walking the entire length of the Mall, visiting the Capitol and Houses of Congress on Tuesday, spending the day at the Natural History Museum on Wednesday (when it poured with rain), going up the Monument on Thursday, and taking us to an excellent Ethiopian restaurant. We now have several brochures to look through and plan our next inside-DC walks.
This brings me back to the beginning of this letter, and our weekend at George Washington National Park. We set off on Saturday morning, and started with a short hike up to Woodstock tower. Like Mt Okemo in Vermont, this is a hike that ends by going up a lookout tower, and at some level I was expecting an experience similar to Mt Okemo. In reality, this was much easier going, and very unusually for us, we took less time than suggested to complete the trail. As we reached the top, we saw a large woodchuck eating some leaves. This was definitely the highlight of the weekend in terms of fauna, at least as far as I am concerned (I was unmoved by seeing bear scat the following day. I have zero interest in ever meeting a bear). We then continued to our cabin in the woods, located at the end of a gravel road and truly in the middle of the woods. There were rocking chairs on the porch, where I sat to rip back a few rows of LR's shrug, so that a design element would be equal on both sides, and a swing where the children sat to look for birds. After supper, we bundled up and went outside to look at the stars. Even with some light pollution from the cabin, it was amazing. We were very lucky, we came for two days of relative warmth sandwiched between icy winds and frost, so we spent quite a while outside, looking at Andromeda and the Pleiades.
On Sunday, we went on a much longer hike - 3.5 hours according to the website, and 5 hours in reality. Except for a couple we met towards the very end, we were completely alone. The foliage was truly amazing on the Hone Quarry trail, and perhaps a bit too much of a good thing - the leaves were so thick on the ground that it was quite slippery and treacherous in places, because you didn't know whether you were going to hit a rock or a root or anything else when you stepped forward. I am glad we did not do this after rain. As we went along ADC and I speculated why the phenomenon of "leaves on the track" that disrupts British Rail's schedule every October and November seems not to exist in the US, because there certainly are many leaves that fall on the ground! We eventually decided that the reason is what causes fall colors in the first place: the combination of cold nights and sunny days, in contrast to the damp and drizzle that possibly causes British leaves to stick to the track. American leaves are probably too dry, and just fly away as trains approach.
Apart from its length, the hike was absolutely perfect. We had great weather, not too hot and not too cold, the right level of exertion - ups and downs, but no scary bits. A bonus before the hike began was a totally unexpected encounter with a fairly large number of Amish, all going for a post-church picnic at Hone Quarry. We had seen several Mennonite churches, but were not expecting this! As we drove along, ADC noticed a "Beware of carriages" graphic sign, but we didn't take it seriously until we actually saw a horse and buggy coming towards us. Shortly after that, we found ourselves following a whole convoy of horse-drawn buggies, all with cooler bags in the back and indicator lights, that flashed appropriately when they turned! The children waved at the Amish children, who waved back. They looked rather like Haredim, especially the young boys, who wore fedora-style hats, and in their flannel shirts and dark non-jeans trousers, looked like pre-bar mitzvah Haredim. It was slightly surreal, going along behind a horse and buggy and occasionally a pick-up truck would come in the other direction.
ETA: They weren't Amish, but Old Order Mennonites: http://www.motherjones.com/photoess
http://www.virginialiving.com/explo
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