The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal

Part 3 of the adventure which began on Sunday, backdated from several days later.

Seeking a different way to return west - retracing steps is for the non-adventurous - I spotted a stairway leading off of Georgetown's hill, and decided to scamper down, to see what I could see.

Precipitous it was, and headed towards the river.  On my way down I caught site of these two graffiti:

I must admit that I agree with both, although the first strikes me as far funnier than the second, which is more plausibly a statement of fact.  Perhaps it's the non-sequitur of juxtaposing "killing people" with "rude," since "rude" is definitely not the first word I would choose to describe "killing people."

As I stopped to take these pictures, a woman passed me on the stairs and asked her companion if the canal was this way.  "Canal?" I thought, ears tingling.  I love a good water feature, be it a fountain or a river (this comes from someone who, despite having grown up next to a river, gone to college next to a river and then, after realizing how much I missed being near a river in graduate school, moved into an apartment in DC thirty seconds from the river, does not like to swim), so I resolved to find this canal.  After all, I had found Georgetown University - surely I could find a canal?

I continued down the stairs, stopping at the bottom to take in the sight of office towers on the other side of the Potomac (Rosslyn, VA), and observe to myself that Virginia is for lovers unless you're both the same gender, in which case you'd best stay here in the District, and then went in search of the canal.  After a few minutes of poking around, I found a promising path, and followed it down alongside a building and, without terribly much warning, I was on a bridge.  I turned left, and saw that I had indeed found the canal.

Clever, I thought, to run paths alongside, and since this was a Sunday afternoon (remember, this post is backdated), people were taking advantage of the pathway, walking, running, riding their bikes, and watching the ducks.  I hadn't seen ducks for quite a while, so for a few minutes I indulged my inner child and watched them bobbing about in the weeds, ducking (ha!) down into the weeds with their feathery behinds in the air to find something to eat.  Funny creatures, ducks.

After marveling at birds which stand on their heads under water just to eat, I walked along the canal to the west, confident that it would lead me somewhere but uncertain as to what exactly it was.  Along the way I looked for clues.

#1: Canal silted up, quite shallow, and full of weeds.  Obviously no longer used.

#2: Canal infrastructure - locks and retaining walls - are being maintained, so it's not simply being allowed to fall apart (you don't really want a photo of the lock they were reconstructing, do you?  No?  Good, because I haven't got one).

#3: A boat in the canal, with an associated dock.  Someone is riding about in the canal, even if it's only up to the next lock.

But these clues only told me that although the canal was not being used for its original purpose, someone was invested in it not falling completely to ruin, even to the point of maintaining a canal boat.  But who?

I should have known, since this is DC.  The responsible party is the government.

See?  Here's the historical marker which was bolted to a nearby boulder (click to enlarge if you'd like to actually read it):

Mystery solved!

(When I got home, I decided to do some research, and Wikipedia kindly informed me of multiple things.  You can read about them here.)