Great Falls, Va and Md

On November 23, John and I went to Great Falls, Va and Md to have a memeorial to John's sister Tami. It was such a beautiful day. In the picture above, we are standing on the Virginia side of the Potomac. There were a bunch of kayakers going over the falls.

This is the flood levels of past years. As you can see in the background the river is very far off and low. I can't imagine the floods getting up to these points! As recently as 1996 the levels got quite high.

On the Maryland side, we crossed the falls over a bridge and tossed in the flowers. The bridge railings were a little wobbly, so it was quite exciting to lean over and watch the water rush by.

Close to Home

Last weekend, John and I decided to stay close to home and walk down to the Inner Harbor and stroll along the new promenade that opened up. That means that you can walk all the way around the Inner Harbor now, before you couldn't walk all the way around it because the promenade hadn't been built yet and then it was closed because of construction.

There was a Norweigian sailing ship that was in the harbor for a visit. Every autumn their navy takes the ship to various ports for training. We did not go on the ship, but they were offering free tours if you wanted to tour it.

So, we didn't end up doing too much, but got some nice pictures out of our weekend.

Vegas, baby!

Last week John went to Phoenix for a work conference. For the last two years, I went with him but this year since I have classes, I didn't get to go for the full week. On Wednesday evening I flew out to Las Vegas to meet John. We stayed in the Tropicana.

On the first night we wandered around and played a few slots. It has been a few years since we had been to Vegas and there have been a lot of changes. Right on the strip they are building a new complex of buildings that replaced the old Boardwalk Casino. It is an immense project.

On Thursday night we got all dressed up and went to AquaKnox for supper. It was a fancy seafood place in the Venetian. It was a lot of fun.

After supper we went downtown. I love downtown - we went to the Golden Nugget which has changed quite a bit. They made a shark tank in the pool area and a waterslide goes through the middle of it. They also made a bar that has a balcony that looks out over Freemont Street.

We went and played slot machines up and down Freemont Street. In Binion's I won $113.00 on a penny machine. It was on a Wizard of Oz machine, that was really fun!

On Friday we walked around the strip some more and covered most of the places we didn't see before. We walked through the Flamingo Casino and saw the flamingo habitat.

Later that night we dressed up: John as Hugh Hefner and Me as a tennis player. There were a lot of crazy costumes.

If you want to see more pictures, go to: http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r53/klub0002/Las%20Vegas/

Happy Anniversary to us!

On Saturday we had our 3rd anniversary and what did we do? We went hiking, of course! There is an old railroad line that runs from Baltimore north to Pennsylvania; we have gone hiking on this trail a few other times. This time we went up to Pennsylvania for our hike. York, PA is about 50 miles from Baltimore and we went hiking just a little south of York. This part of the trail is pretty neat because the rails are still there, further south the rails have been removed.

It wasn't very busy either, which was nice. Mostly bikers were there, there was some "evidence" of horses around, but we didn't see any. We went about 6.5 miles which brings our total miles since May to 97.3 miles. We wanted to make 100 miles over the summer, but that didn't quite work out so we extended the deadline to the end of the year. I think we can make the 2.7 miles by December. :)

A geological sidenote: There was a lot of great schist along this trail, John's head is for scale.

Schist is a metamorphic rock. It is made when shale is heated up deep in the earth and it metamorphises into schist. A lot of the schist along this trail was at an angle like you can see above. It was really very interesting to look at.

Are you going to Scarborough Faire?

This weekend was the Baltimore Marathon, the race went right by our apartment. They started nice and early and Chopper and I were on the porch watching and when the runners went by people would clap and cheer. That made Chopper wonder what the heck was going on. He was growling and barking a little bit. Maybe he was just getting into the spirit of things and cheering everyone on.

In the afternoon we decided to go to the Maryland Renaissance Fair.

It was such a nice day for it. We did not dress up, but the costume rental was very reasonable. Chopper was not allowed to come with, but he did dress up. Doesn't he look great?

The joust was pretty neat, too. The horses were so cool. This one was my favorite:

Weaverton Road to Garvey Shelter

This Saturday we hiked the Appalachian Trail from Weaverton Road to the Garvey Shelter (3 miles), unfortunately we do not have two cars, so it was an in and out hike (total of 6 miles). The guide book that I have for the Maryland section of the AT says that this section of the trail has an elevation change of 576 feet that is comprised of 16 switchbacks. We only counted 15, but we were tired by the time we got back to them. After you have hiked the initial 576 feet you get this view:
This is the Potomac River, Virginia to the left, West Virginia to the right and Maryland in the foreground. The last time we were in this area, the river was much more turbulent, but this time it is really calm and pretty low.

After the side-trail to the view over Weaverton Cliff we continued on to the shelter. There is another 200 feet of elevation, but it is over about 1.5 miles, so it is pretty gradual. About half way, we felt like we had enough of this dang mountain! But like good hikers we took a break and soldiered on.

At three miles we came to the Garvey Shelter. It was an impressively nice place. There is a loft, a fire pit, a water source that is down a steep slope and an outhouse! This place was like the taj mahal of camping shelters. Inside there is a log book that people sign and write stories in. It was pretty interesting to read. Some people had seen bears, others wrote about where they had come from and where they were going.

After a little break we headed back to the car. We ran across a lot more people on the way back. There were quite a few boy scout troups and groups of people enjoying the lovely day. As a reward we drove into Harpers Ferry (3 miles) for frozen custard (I had vanilla and pumpkin twist) and a shake (John had peanut butter cup/vanilla).

We are slowly, but surely attacking the AT. Right now we have gone 3 miles on the southern end of the Maryland section and 3.1 miles on the northern section. One day we'll meet ourselves in the middle!

Wheeeeeee!

This weekend we decided to go to an amusement park - King's Dominion in Richmond, VA. We left on Sunday morning, its about a 2.5 hour drive. We arrived at the hotel, checked in and got our tickets. I found a deal on the internet through our hotel to get tickets there instead of at the park: less time waiting in line.

There are lots of great roller coasters there: Rebel Yell, Hurler, Grizzly, Dominator and Volcano. There are also a few more, we tried to hit as many as we could. We were there from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm and we didn't get a chance to go on all of them. At first, the lines were not very bad - maybe a 10 minute wait, on the Hurler there wasn't even enough people in line to fill up the ride. As the day got sunnier and warmer, the more people came. By the time we got to the Volcano the wait was 1 hour! (I timed it - if the wait had been posted somewhere I doubt I would have wanted to stand in line.) But, the ride was totally worth it. It was so fast and twisty and its one of those roller coasters where your feet hang down. Very fun.After all the roller coasters we went to the waterpark that's attached and sat in the lazy river. We went around twice. Some people who got into the lazy river didn't realize it was a LAZY river and they were quite rowdy. But it was a nice relaxing end to a very fun day.

We went to TIGFriday's next door to our hotel for supper and realized that our necks had been thrown around quite a bit on the rides - Oh man!

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!