A River Runs Through It

It wasn't until this year that I realized how vital the Potomac River is to the region where we live. I started to notice that almost everywhere we went, the water we were seeing was the Potomac River. Below is a view looking towards Maryland from the Northern Neck area of Virginia, a quick trip Kent and I took on Columbus Day. I thought it was funny how every wooden post had a bird on it.
In September Kent and I went on a full-moon kayaking trip at our favorite state park, Caledon Natural Area on the Potomac River. It's only about a 45-minute drive from our house. As you can see from the picture below, we headed out at sunset on a lovely clear evening. Soon it was dark and we watched the moon rise over the river. We weren't able to get any good pictures once it was dark since we were in kayaks. Below is another view of the Potomac from the Maryland side. This is the National Harbor area near Washington, DC. I took a water taxi across from Virginia over to Maryland. This statue, called "The Awakening" used to be located at a park in Washington, DC.

The view of the Potomac below was taken from George Washington's home, Mount Vernon.

Here's a bit of trivia--the Potomac River is the border betweeen Maryland and Virginia. But the border isn't in the middle of the river--if you walk out a yard into the water, you are in Maryland. When the water level is low on the Virginia side of the river, a person walking along the beach would be in Maryland. Kind of strange, isn't it?

There's a place west of DC where the Potomac has some rough water. This is called Great Falls, and it's a National Park.

Really more of a big rapids compared to the falls in the west, but it was a neat park with some really nice hiking trails and some great views.

Pictured below was the amazing C & O (Chesapeake and Ohio) canal and locks along side the river to help early Americans to get around the falls with their boat shipping and transportation. This was hand dug, and hand cut stones created in the early days of our young country - around 1800. There were some blog posts earlier this year that also featured the Potomac River--in April when we took the boat cruise on the Potomac to see the cherry blossoms, and on Memorial Day when we went to Robert E. Lee's birthplace on the Potomac.

And that's the end of your history/geography lesson for today!