Part 3 - Rock Creek Park
The District of Columbia is shaped like a square with one of the
corners pointing due north and the opposite one dipping underwater into the
Potomac River. Actually there was supposed to be part of the city on the other
side of the Potomac, but the folks in Virginia were a tad smarter than those in
Maryland. Virginia did get stuck with National Airport though.
The street layout for the nation's capitol was designed as a clever
plan by some French guy named L'Enfant to slow down an army on horseback, but these
days it just confuses the tourists in Chevys and pisses them off. No wonder they
hate us bureaucrats so much.
There are letter and name streets which run east / west and numbered
streets which run north / south. Superimposed on this orderly grid are a series
of streets with state names which radiate out from the White House and the
Capitol. A few, like Pennsylvania Avenue, make twists and turns all over the
place. If that wasn't confusing enough there a numerous traffic circles tossed
in for good measure.
The only sensible thing that French guy did was to leave intact a
valley formed by a creek which divides the city in half. Rock Creek Park, which
is administered by the National Park Service, follows the meandering creek of
the same name from the Potomac River all the way to Rockville, MD. about 30
miles north. There is a two lane road which parallels the creek. It is closed on
Sunday for bicyclists and hikers, but during the week it is without question one
of the nicest commuting routes in the country; especially if you are on a
motorcycle. I learned the route through Rock Creek Park when I worked at
National Geographic in the mid-70s, and I when I went to work at USIA in 1982 I
started using it again on my SilverWing, even though I had to travel out of my
way to get to it.
The simplest and fastest route would have been south down the major
arterials, but instead I would head about four miles east until I entered the
Rock Creek Parkway from Georgia Avenue near the Walter Reed military hospital.
After a short twisty descent into the park I would follow the serpentine path of
the Parkway downstream to the P Street exit, then down 20th Street, past my old
house, to Pennsylvania Avenue where the USIA building was located. I'd park my
bike across the street in metered motorcycle slot for the bargain price of $1.25
per day.
Aside from the scenery, the nicest feature of the Rock Creek Parkway is
that it is maintained by the National Park Service rather than the District of
Columbia. Not only is the road surface kept in top condition, in the winter it
is always promptly plowed and kept free of ice. The only exception is when there
was a really heavy snow and the plows are transferred to the core area of the
city to keep the streets around the Capitol and the White House open. Then the
Park Service simply closes the park to vehicular traffic.
To be continued: Another Big Snow Storm
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