A nice restful day

Thursday night, I ran 4 miles. Or was it 5? So hard to keep track any more.
Friday, I took Lagniappe and we hiked the C&O Canal from Harpers Ferry up to Dargan's Bend and back. 8.5 miles total.
As you can see, it was a beautiful day for as walk. And you-know-who was raring to go.
We left this area by the Ferry and headed up the towpath. About a mile from Harpers Ferry, landscaping and maintenance on the old canal bed stops and it's pretty overgrown. The canal bed is dry and mostly reclaimed by trees, and just the remnants of the old locks are visible.

Here's old Lock #35.
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Hard to imagine that this old lock was once part of the largest commercial transportation system in the nation. Started in 1825, this 185 mile long canal took 25 years to complete, and it was used to transport coal and other raw materials from Cumberland, MD down to Washington, DC, and grain and other materials back out across the Appalachians. It was run until 1924--well past the First World War--when a flood severely damaged it and the C&O railroad that had come to own it decided to just let it go.






The National Park service acquired the whole length of it in 1938, and while they preserved a few of the locks and houses for tourism and maintain the towpath as a biking/hiking trail, most of it has been taken back by nature, as evidenced by Lock #37 here.
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The canal raised and lowered mule-drawn canal boats 605 feet over the length of the trek via 74 such locks, all of which were built by hand by immigrant (legal immigrant) labor, and in some cases, rented slaves. They also built eleven stone aquaducts and a tunnel that the canal passes through, and they dug the entire canal bed itself. It was a monumental project in it's day, and there was no power equipment more complex than horse-drawn wagons. it was all pick and shovel and bucket work and hundreds of men died from injury and disease along the way. Many are still buried in unmarked graves along the canal.



Now the canal is mostly forgotten, but it's still there for people who want to explore history or just have a nice walk or bike ride. Here's Lock #35 from the lower end:

It's pretty crowded in places like Washington, DC and Great Falls, and even up at Harpers Ferry, especially on week-ends, but when you get out from these places a bit, you can quickly find yourself alone and in another world. We only saw a few bicyclists between the Ferry and Dargan's Bend and most of the trail's pretty quiet and secluded once out of the popular areas.

We had a good time, and it was just nice to take a day away from people, cars, phones, ect. and just amble along. But it wasn't all walking. Lagniappe took time out for a swim in the Potomac River.


And afterwards, when we got back to Harpers Ferry, Lagniappe had two and a half ice cream cones at the Swiss Miss shop. The half? Well after he had two cones of his own, he decided that a little girl in a stroller passing by didn't need the rest of hers, and since I'd taken my eye off him for a second to talk to a pair of lovely lasses, he availed himself of the short window of opportunity and snatched the little girl's cone. @#$%* dog...