Biking the Mt. Vernon trail sounded so peaceful and fun when I found the info on the internet. What a great way to see DC. 18 miles? Easy, peasy.... Well little did I know that DC would be overtaken by a record breaking heat wave with high humidity. Thankfully my buddies and I were dedicated to the idea. Dedicated or Crazy...hmmmm.....
We took a shuttle over to Old Town Alexandria and then walked down King Street to the bike shop. Our first clue that this was going to be a difficult ride should've been when we were way too excited about going into a Walgreens for a few minutes because it was air conditioned.
A few blocks after hopping on our bikes, we turned onto the trail and it was absolutely beautiful!! I can only imagine what it would look like in the fall. It was a nice, easy ride, but the heat was really working us!
At one point we stopped at a map to see if there was someplace nearby to stop, get out of the heat and get something to eat. A local rider stopped and suggested that we head over to the National Horticulture Society, pick up some water and turn back! Yep, it was so bad that a complete stranger told us it was time to turn back. :-)
We met James at the Horticulture Society and he escorted us to their kitchen and hooked us up with ice water. He invited us to stay in the a/c as long as we needed and shared a little of the history of River Farm.
After we cooled off we headed back and found that....it was all downhill. We practically coasted the whole way back to the bike shop. Once we turned the bikes in, we had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before we took the water taxi back to National Harbor.
It wasn't quite the ride I had pictured in my head and I would've loved to go all the way up to Mt. Vernon...but there's not much you can do when it's 104 degrees and you're on the verge of heat stroke... I'll have to save the rest of the trail to ride another day.
2 comments:
It was hot walking around. I can only imagine how hot it was on a bike. The trail looks beautiful and looks like it was worth the effort.
Dawn, thanks for sharing the pics. I miss the parks back east...haven't found anything like that around here yet. The taxi looked like funtoo. :) See you Sat!
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