SED - First real hike of the season

Today was a glorious day, not too hot and not too cold. As we have been warned that spring in the greater DC area is fleeting, we decided that there was no time like the present to go on a hike. We chose the MD Great Falls park (there is a VA Great Falls park, too - I find the lack of imagination shown by early European settlers very irritating), where the Billy Goat Trail promised to be the kind of hike we are used to from Israel: a bit of rock scrambling, a bit of level path, and a lot of wild flowers. Just as we started, we saw a magnificent Eastern Swallowtail, and along the towpath, by the locks of the abandoned C&O Canal, we saw red-eared sliders (orange-bellied terrapins, as I called them at first): At first we thought we were seeing rocks in the water, but then they moved very slightly and we realised that these were terrapins. At the end of the route, we saw actual snapping turtles, looking just like in The Bears' Vacation! (ADC asks that I clarify that I know that the Berenstain Bears were at the seaside and therefore they cannot be the same species). 

The rock scramble was, as always, a bit terrifying but I did it in the end. S, who has recently claimed a fear of heights, seemed to have forgotten that, and announced that he had had a wonderful time when we got back to the car. A is a mountain goat, so of course he enjoyed himself. He has finally begun using the GPS he got as a bar mitzvah present, and today he also took more pictures than usual. 

We came home, tired and pleased as the Hebrew phrase goes, showered and went out to eat at Nando's in Silver Spring - marking the third country/continent in which we have sampled their chicken, after England and South Africa. The day ended with watching the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of ST:TOS.