Category: River

Mammoth Cave Loop

New River Bridge — The to and the from of any road trip can be every bit as rewarding as the primary destinations. That was certainly true of this trip through West Virginia and Kentucky!

I won’t mince words. I love my daughters. My older daughter Courtney is a student at the University of Virginia which could be along the way of this road trip if I wanted it to be so I stopped both ways and each time Courtney graced me with some attention. She can make a father’s heart soar!

At UVA with Courtney On my way west, as I entered West Virginia I drove by a National Park Service sign. These always catch my attention because they’re without exception wonderful places to visit. “Cool” I thought “I need a little break from driving so I’ll check it out.” I’d never heard of the mis-named New River but it’s one of the oldest rivers on the continent with the deepest gorges in the east. The bridge pictured above spans the New River gorge and is the longest arch bridge in the world. How great! Seeing it wasn’t even on my list!

River

Snakeden Restoration

We live on Lake Audubon in Reston and the creek which feeds it has been undergoing restoration for months. As construction makes its way to the mouth of the creek, it’s fun to watch the progress. What you’ll see in these pictures are two stages of process. Once the work is done and nature grows back, it’s a wonderful outcome. Much of the damage done by development will have been repaired, the creek will become healthy, and sediment will no longer fill our lake.

The following seven picture were taken from the vantage points indicated below. In the top three you can see some completed work with a little of the vegetation coming back. The last four are work-in-progress where you can see the damaged banks of the creek and can assess how big a construction job the effort restoration is.

River Swim Travel

Foiled by a Hurricane

Brooklyn Bridge Swim Path — The course is to swim 1,000 meters from shore to shore across the East River of Manhattan under one of the world’s greatest structures, the marvelous Brooklyn Bridge.

This year it was going to happen. I was going to swim the East River. Everything was looking good. So far, Lady Luck was working with me. Hurricane Hanna wasn’t due to arrive in NYC till this evening. We’d be done with the race and long gone before then. I was excited.

For the race, all systems were go. I left D.C. on Friday with fair weather and arrived a few hours later in NYC. Everything was going fine. To familiarize myself with the race I walked around the South Street Seaport area, checked out the course, and mapped my path from hotel to where the race was to begin. As you can see in the picture above, it was a beautiful afternoon. Saturday I would swim under the Brooklyn Bridge!

Once satisfied that I knew the lay of the land I headed to my hotel. As I stood at Reception checking-in I received a prerecorded announcement on my cell phone. “The race has been canceled.” The cancelation wasn’t due to anticipated bad weather during the event but instead due new safety precautions taken in the wake of Katrina. The police simply wanted to err on the side of caution.

This morning I still went. There on the pier were gathered a few dozen swimmers picking up t-shirts and chatting over coffee and donuts. It was a beautiful morning for a swim. The air was calm and warm; waves would not have been an issue. As a group we weren’t happy with the way things had played out but we understood. It just wasn’t to be this year … maybe next?

Watch this spot for a Brooklyn Bridge Swim entry in 12 months!

Hike River Travel

Great Falls National Park

Post author By TravisGood
Post date September 1, 2008
No Comments on Great Falls National Park

Great Falls Looking Down — Boating, climbing, hiking, running, repelling, fishing, and the list goes on. People were out to enjoy the lovely morning of the last long weekend of summer.

National Parks are national treasures to be visited and enjoyed at every opportunity. Why is it then that I don’t get excited about our local parks? Simple, we learn to take nearby sites for granted. Thankfully though on this glorious Labor Day I broke through and got out.

Great Falls is an unnavigable stretch of the Potomac River which flows between Maryland and Virginia, past Washington D.C. and in to the Chesapeake Bay. The rocks and falls are treacherous but George Washington believed that boat traffic was critical along the Potomac to connect the Ohio Valley with the East. He felt the bonds of trade would strengthen the fractured colonies and help the union succeed. Consequently he initiated what later became a series of lochs for boats to move goods from Cincinnati to Washington D.C. to countries in Europe.

Very little exists of the original lochs and the town of Matildaville but there’s much to see and do! The entire area has been set aside as a National Park.

Mountain Ocean River Road Summary Travel

The World’s Longest National Road – Driving the TCH

Post author By TravisGood
Post date May 2, 2007
No Comments on The World’s Longest National Road – Driving the TCH

TCH Walking Tours — Every Yellow Icon Represents a Night's Stay in Canada

Since I was going to drive the length of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH), from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia, I was going to need regular exercise so as to stay fit and an engaging project to keep my mind occupied and interested. If I could do both and at the same time learn a lot about Canada then all the better.

The answer of what to do came from a book entitled “Canada: Coast to Coast” which not only details thousands of points of interest along Canada’s major highways, but also includes full walking tours for 14 of Canada’s largest cities. Twelve of these 14 were along my chosen path so I resolved to walk all twelve tours.

This site is not about my walking tours.
This site is about something I did during each tour.
At every tour stop I recorded a brief video from my wife and daughters.

This page has the videos I made across my three week journey down the TCH (12 Apr 07 – 2 May 07).