Walking around the neighborhood

hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Stuck with stay at home orders, I have been walking around the neighborhood. You get into certain routes when driving. After 35 years here, I never noticed these 2 places:

This house has a moat hidden by the cars before entering through the gate.

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These two houses, like many in my neighborhood, share a driveway. Though my house and driveway are smaller.
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flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
I walk in the woods and remain ignorant........
 

hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
I walk in the woods and remain ignorant........
I did that also:

One of many small waterfalls on the deserted Little Devils Staircase trail
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Three family graveyard. It has a cluster of deaths in 1918-early 1919 out of proportion to the rest of the dates. Indicator of the Spanish Flu pandemic?
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tinman

Well-known member
Stuck with stay at home orders, I have been walking around the neighborhood. You get into certain routes when driving. After 35 years here, I never noticed these 2 places:

This house has a moat hidden by the cars before entering through the gate.
View attachment 127440

These two houses, like many in my neighborhood, share a driveway. Though my house and driveway are smaller.
View attachment 127441
Anything swimming in the moat?
 

hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Walking around to the north of my house I found this COVID conspiracy theory delight on a narrow lot that hides a 4+ story building with a large garage hidden in the back:

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flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
Good thing you are not walking in Rome, they will track you down. :shifty:





Rome Mayor Uses Drone to Hunt Down, Fine Jogger During Lockdown

966
Clique Images via UnsplashThomas D. Williams, Ph.D.16 Apr 2020705
1:56
ROME — Rome mayor Virginia Raggi boasted on social media this week that she used a drone to track down and eventually fine a jogger who violated the coronavirus lockdown.
On Easter Monday in Rome, local police carried out more than 14,000 checks and issued 162 sanctions, Ms. Raggi has tweeted, adding that a runner on Rome’s Appian Way tried to evade police but was tracked down with a drone and fined.
Ms. Raggi has adopted a “tough cop” approach to the pandemic, attempting to terrorize citizens into submission through an increased police presence and by regularly publishing the number of random stops carried out and citations issued.
For a while, Rome police would slowly patrol city streets using bullhorns to warn people to stay home or face the consequences. The mayor announced moreover that she has hired an additional 300 police officers who will go on active duty to patrol the nation’s capital on April 17.
Raggi has also urged citizens to report on each other’s failure to comply with regulations and set up a special website where people can file their reports anonymously. Many Romans complained about the measure, insisting it was a “witch hunt” reminiscent of Italy’s dark days of fascism.
Initially, Romans accepted the lockdown with good-natured resignation, inventing flash mobs from balconies and playing music out of their windows. Now, as the national quarantine has been extended to May, the weight of confinement, combined with severe economic concerns, have brought the people of Rome to their knees.
Many have noted that Ms. Raggi, who was notoriously incapable of organizing trash collection in Rome and of keeping the city subway system working, has finally shown that she is good at something: harassing her own citizens.


https://www.breitbart.com/health/20...daily&utm_campaign=20200416&utm_content=Final
 

hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
The park across the street from one of the elementary schools that my son used to attend.



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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
I had only gone to this local park in the days of my sons' train infatuations, the park having a carnival train. But further down the hill is Brookside Gardens, part of the park, which I somehow missed.

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Only dating from 1875, this house moved from rural up-county to suburban DC like many others.
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flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
Sometimes the woodpeckers can save the white pines from the Beatles.
 

hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Walking around Greenbelt, 1936 unskilled labor-built apartments:
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Part of the planning for this community was the public sidewalks are inside the block. The roads around the blocks are "service" roads for parking and utilities such as trash.
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The former school/continuing community center has classic 1930's frieze extolling federal objectives that are up for debate today:
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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Greenbelt was originally developed and owned 100% by the feds. It was subsequently sold to a coop. Many of the buildings are under coop tenancy. That arrangement, the size of the homes (most seem to be around 800 sqft), and history seems to have attracted not only a diverse population, but also a population with a similar political economic view:

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Note that DEMISE (properly registered with a current registration) is a Volvo:
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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Cabin John Creek
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I have driven by this place countless times - and never noticed it until walking. Oil heat has become an anachronism around here with the fall of natural gas prices.
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A Scout in my troop has an Eagle project lined up to do some work on this trail. I hope that this is not what the park service expects him to do.
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After an inch of rain, finally an opportunity for sun bathing.
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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Walking again on the Cabin John Trail, came across this collapsing Gibson Grove AME church. It abuts 495, but I never knew it existed because the sound barriers block its view.


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It turns out that when 495 was built, it was built right through the church's property. The church is on the north side of 495, whereas the cemetery is on the south side. The cemetery has since been overtaken by bamboo and the surrounding area gentrified.

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And the overall site declared an archaeological site.

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Cabin John Creek becomes much more scenic as it approaches the fall line.

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The trail heads up to MacArthur Blvd and then over. But I tried to go under instead. Here are 3 bridges barely visible through the Virginia Creepers - the top MacArthur Blvd, the middle Cabin John Pkwy, and barely visible below the Pkwy is the WSSC aqueduct delivering water from the Potomac River intake near Great Falls to the water treatment plant on the DC/MD line.

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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
Behind the house in the first picture in this thread are the stables for the poorer lords and (mostly) ladies without their own stables, and the start of the Rock Creek Trail. There are few remaining pine groves in this area - here a mix of hemlock and (white?) pine.

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The Capital Crescent Trail was a B&O line servicing the Department of Agriculture's power plant with (Congressionally mandated [Sen Harry Bryd]) West Virginia anthracite coal. The right-of-way was sold to convert into public transportation about 1984, but nothing happened - so converted to a trail until recently. Now the Purple trolley Line is being built.
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Here the feds are clearing the swamp in the park - and it does smell!!!!

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Once past the beltway and into Kensington, the trail passes 100s of Levitt homes.
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We walked completely around Marriott's Morman Temple. But as the temple is on a hill and the trail so close to the grounds, Gabriel was almost invisible. The best view still is driving on 495 heading west.
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hkpierce

'02 140 Hi BlueBlk Pass
The Irish Trail is a spur off of the Rock Creek Trail, but it is actually older, constructed in the 1890s by the Ye Forest Inne resort. Walking the trail, the uphill side has double 8+ foot chain link fences. That is more than the White House, Observatory Circle or NIH has. What is going on? One sign says it is because it is a hazardous waste dump. Googling later, I found that it was only some mercury, cadmium, PCBs, and medical waste. Further, the medical waste site is the location of a child care center and baseball field. And the Armed Forces Pest Management Board is now located there. More well known, it is also where the famous Walter Reed Medical Museum is now located. At the top of the trail is the former National Park Seminary that bought out Ye Forest Inne, and in turn it was bought out by the feds as the Walter Reed Annex. But the feds couldn't keep the the buildings up, and they went to ruin, vandalized and arson. The last time I walked around this area was in the mid 1980s, and it only went downhill from there:

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The Army gave up, especially after the area was declared a National Historic site. The Army sold the site to private developers. They in turn build townhomes with a 4-design pattern that look decent from the front and invoke the worst of British public housing from the back. It is from the back the Irish trail approaches the area.

Here, the dance hall/bowling alley has been converted into condos:
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On this street, the townhomes were better designed, following the original buildings (the lower ones in the middle). The old buildings conversions seem to be financed by the new townhome sales.
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More condos in a conversion. There used to be an auditorium at the end of this building, but it was burned down by arsonists.
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Private residences in both the windmill and the one-room wide Georgian style house on the right.
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