Hiking the Potomac River / 10-17-14

I decided to go and see Great Falls which is located on the upper Potomac River.  They are about 15 miles up stream for downtown Washington, D C.  There are several visitor centers along the Virginia side near where my family lives.  I decided to start at the main center & overlooks of the falls.

As you can see it is a national park & so I was able to use my "senior" lifetime pass.  There are two main viewing overlooks right at the falls & these are a few.

These three pictures (above) make up a panorama of this (main) part of the falls.  In the last one, if you look closely, you can see the overlook & people on the  Maryland side of the river.  This flows all the way down & joins the Chesapeake Bay, which divides part of Maryland & all of Delaware from the western part of Maryland.  Sorry for the geography lesson but I am sure several of you have never been in this area.  This is where I grew up and spent the first 24 years of life........
Below is another look back at the falls from farther down stream.

The next is a look at the river a little below the falls as it travels what is called Mather Gorge (pictured below).

Below is my shot of the gorge taken looking back up stream toward the falls which are not quite visible.  It is a weird angle since I was trying to get the picture without falling off the rocks into the river.

Next is a plaque to a very famous early champion of national parks all over the U S.  I have seen this same plaques in the Sierra Nevada Mts. (Calif.) and there is even a "pass" on the John Muir Trail named for him.

I hiked up stream from the falls to another visitor center which was about 2 miles (each way)on the trail which followed by the side of the river. It had great shade cover and was lightly used this day (Friday).

Above is one of the trail signs which is similar to the signs on the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs from Mexico to Canada going through Calif./Oregon/Washington & is 2,650 miles long).

I even found some remaining wall the made up part of the canal that ran from Carter Rock, Md. down to Washington, D C. These wall date back several hundred years but are now longer a functioning part of the canal.  The canal moved all sorts of products around the area for years.

I am now up to date with my travels (so far) but I am sure something else will happen soon, so hang in there.  Adios!