Washington DC - Tidal Basin and Monuments

Type of Exercise: Cycling/Biking
Biking Stats:
Distance: 29 mi
Duration: 2 hr 27 mins

The trip to DC…

This morning started off at 5:11 AM. Like the Punxsutawney groundhog, I poked my head out the door, bleary eyed and groggy, to check on the weather situation. Weather was hazy, but no rain. Bike ride was a go! I wasn’t sure how far I would go today, but I knew I was going to push it as far as I could with the time I had if the weather would hold. I had missed riding yesterday because of the thunderstorms in the area.

A quick breakfast was eaten, and I was out the door. The Mount Vernon Trail North took me through Alexandria Old Town along the waterfront. On my way through Oronoco Park in Alexandria, I passed by Paul Manafort’s former seven figure condo complex that was raided by the FBI.

Sidenote: I used to bike past it all the time on my work commute, when we lived in Alexandria City. I actually biked past it ON the morning that THE search warrant was served on his residences, and I saw all the law enforcement vehicles blocking the garage entrance/exit. At the time I was curious as to what was going on. I also didn’t know that Manafort lived there, until I saw it on the news that same night after I already biked past it a second time on my way home!

I got some great pictures underneath the Wilson bridge on my way up! Underneath the Wilson Bridge is a park, which might make an appearance sometime soon as a blog entry! ;-)

The trail winds North past Reagan National Airport and Gravely Point Park. Gravelly Point is a cool place where you can picnic with the delightful smell of jet-wash and the screaming noise of large passenger jets landing over top of your head. Seriously, though, it’s an awesome place to go and plane-spot. You feel as though you could reach up and touch the planes (when they are landing South on runway 19). If you look on a map, you can see that it’s a tiny grassy peninsula in the Potomac River, just North of the runway.

OK I need to take a moment to complain about a particular type of trail user. They are super rude. They stop in the middle of the trail with all their friends. They have NO consideration for other trail users. They are here visiting from another country, and they are 2-3ft tall. Yes, folks, I’m talking about the Canadian goose! While making my way through Gravelly Point, the trail was littered with geese. I slowed down to allow them to cross, but they would not budge. I wound my way in front of one, who immediately looked up at me and started loudly HISSING! How rude! A cyclist coming from the other side giggled and pointed out that I was getting hissed at.

After that, I again I found myself in a situation where I needed to get across the Potomac River. This time, I was going to DC, not Maryland. The 14th Street bridge dumps out right at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin, so I took that (as I always do). The 14th street bridge has a pedestrian/bike path on one side, which allows you to make the trip from Virginia to DC. It’s extremely loud and windy. There are no noise barriers, and it makes up one of the major through-ways out of the district. Thus, it is ALWAYS busy, except for the occasional presidential/vice-presidential motorcades. Trust me folks…the novelty wears off pretty quick for those, after you sit in the already horrible traffic and scream, because now you’re completely stuck waiting for a motorcade to clear.

Once over the bridge, you’re treated to a gorgeous view of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, which sits directly on the waterfront of the tidal basin. Today ALL of the landscapers were out mowing and weed trimming! I was dodging mowers and people with weed trimmers left and right coming off the trail. A DC Police Department cadet class was milling about on the pavement in front of Thomas Jefferson. They were out for their morning PT. We all definitely noticed each other. We were the only people there who were not landscaping or working on the Jefferson restoration project. Seriously, there was not a tourist in sight. It…was…GLORIOUS, but also quite eerie! The Tidal Basin is a tremendously popular place for tourists to visit in DC. In the spring-time people flood the basin to see the cherry-blossoms blooming. All other times of the year, people walk around the basin to the various monuments for pictures, etc. It’s usually a mad house with absolutely no room to bike and barely any room to walk! Today, it was BARREN. It was like a ghost town!

The Tidal Basin and Monuments

The Tidal Basin is a reservoir, and it serves an important function for the District of Columbia and the National Mall area. For all the rhetoric out there from divisive politicians about this topic in other contexts, DC IS actually a swamp. At it’s Southernmost point in East Potomac Park, DC sits at the confluence of two big rivers, the Potomac River and the Anacostia River. Rivers, just like other large bodies of water, experience tidal changes, due to the forces of gravity visited upon the earth by our moon. The Tidal Basin serves to catch the tide waters, which are then used to flush the adjacent Washington Channel out into the Potomac River.

The Basin was first planned in the 1880s by Army. Colonel Peter Hains, and the very tip of East Potomac Park, where the two rivers meet, is called Hains Point. For those of you, who read my post about the National Harbor, the “Awakening” statue of a giant struggling to free himself from the ground at the National Harbor was originally placed at Hains Point and later sold/moved.

The Tidal Basin was designed with the intent for it to also be a jewel of the capital, and gradually the government adorned it with monuments, gardens and parks. You can play baseball or golf at the diamonds or at the golf course in East Potomac Park. All kinds of soccer, kickball, flag-football, and other sports leagues meet regularly at the park to play (pre-pandemic).

The waterfront provides an excellent array of photo opportunities of monuments, cherry blossoms, and parts of the national mall. You can fish in the Tidal Basin, and the catch is pretty good. You’ll find a wide array of marine life at the end of your hook, if you dare drop it into the Tidal Basin, including: small mouth bass, large mouth bass, eel, bluegill, catfish, and the massive dreaded invasive snake-head fish.

There’s a story in my family that my maternal grandfather proposed to my grandmother at the Tidal Basin among the blooming cherry blossoms, while he was stationed in DC as a White House guard. So the Tidal Basin has a round-about role in my existence!

The basin has also been the site of a few nefarious/scandalous happenings in the DC area, of course. Wilbur Mills, former Ways and Means Committee Chairman in the House of Representatives, had his limo pulled over by Park Police on the Tidal Basin, and when they opened the door, a famous Argentinian stripper came bolting out of the car and jumped into the water! They rescued her and ensured the limo got all parties home, but there seems to be an implication that Mills was drunk and inexplicably had scratches all over his face (from the stripper). You can read more about it here from the son of a former Mills staffer.

As alluded to previously, ole’ “Tommy-J” (Thomas Jefferson Memorial) is getting a face-lift and a new ceiling, thanks to the National Park Service. Prior to this work, the top of the structure had been partially covered by a black biofilm that seemed to have stained the marble. For years, this Memorial has had the strangest stripe on the top of the dome, as the Park Service tested a laser removal strategy on a slice of the monument. It seems that they are finally ready to clean the rest off!

I wound my way around the basin to the South on the East side, passing the paddle boats. The boats were all chained together and empty. It’s so strange to see the basin without a million tourists on paddle boats! I made my way over the Kutz Bridge, named for Brig. General Charles Kutz. Kutz was a civil engineer and sat on the Board of Commissioners in Washington DC.

I don’t usually make it to this particular part of the Tidal Basin, so I wound up finding something new to me. The place where the first cherry blossom tree was planted is marked with a special monument and a stone Japanese lantern!

The cherry blossom trees, which attract so much attention in the spring, originated from a request by the first female board member of the National Geographic Society, Eliza Scidmore. She made a request to the Office of Public Buildings that trees should be planted along the Potomac River. According to a WTOP article on the subject, her request was duly ignored by the Army Superintendent of that office, so she went straight around him and got the first lady, Helon Taft, on-board! They began raising funds to plant cherry trees, when a Japanese chemist in DC asked if they would accept a donation of 2,000 trees from Japan. The mayor of Tokyo gifted the 2,000 trees to the United States to be planted along the Potomac, but they were all diseased when they arrived and had to be burned. The Japanese mayor then made a SECOND donation of 3,020 trees, which were planted. In return, the US gifted the Japanese people with flowering dogwood trees.

The whole affair is a lovely and beautiful diplomatic gesture, which is celebrated more than 100 years later with an annual Cherry Blossom Festival on the Tidal Basin. In times like this, it’s also remarkable to note the metaphor of those 3,020 (tree) immigrants coming to our shores, taking root in the USA and making it so much more beautiful by adding theirs to ours.

My morning journey continued on to the newest monument on the basin, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The memorial is incredible and contains inspiring quotes from his many speeches across the country in stone, set into a beautiful garden with smooth stone benches. King himself looms large over the waterfront and is depicted in profile emerging from a large stone. He stands tall and proud, gazing over the waterfront. Far behind him and separate is the remainder of the stone from which he emerges. The concept is that King is a stone of hope out of the mountain of despair. The monument is truly remarkable.

Time was ticking and I needed to keep moving. Next up was a breeze-through tour of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It sits on the South West side of the Tidal Basin, and contains depictions of all 4 terms of FDR’s presidency. Yes, you read that correctly. FDR served in 4 terms as President of the United States. He served before there were term limitations on the office. The author of the New Deal has one of the coolest monuments in Washington DC, depicting the economic, social efforts of his administration. The quotes on the walls are my favorite parts. Major events such as his fire-side chats are depicted in statue.

If FDR were alive today and knew of this monument, he would not have been happy about it. He did not desire to have a huge monument dedicated to his achievements. Instead, he wanted something much more modest and low-profile. Before the massive monument around the Tidal Basin was built, he already had a small “Block” of a monument in front of the National Archives, which simply reads “In Memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1882 - 1945.” That monument remains in front of the National Archives, and so FDR is a president with 2 monuments in his name. He would be most displeased.

Eleanor Roosevelt (America’s longest serving First Lady) is also honored for her contributions as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. All of the fountains were turned off, so I snapped a few pictures and moved right along.

I did have one VERY strange thing happen to me while in DC. I saw an albino squirrel! I’ve only ever seen 2 of these in my entire life! I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a bunch of pictures as fast as I could, but before I could take a decent picture, he was gone! He leapt from tree to tree, and there was no way for me to pursue him. Bummer! The pictures of the squirrel that I DO have, are blurry. This might as well be a “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch” story, given my terrible evidence!

The last memorial on the Tidal Basin is for someone, who readers of this blog will readily recognize, George Mason. The man and generations of his family were land owners of large areas of Alexandria and Fairfax County, including the land upon which my house sits. They were the functional equivalent of the next door neighbors to George and Martha Washington. Mason was also one of the founding fathers of the country and the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was the foundation for the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. His slave ownership and later political activities during the Constitutional Convention are seemingly counter-intuitive to some of these beliefs, but he is honored with a monument there along the river. He sits on a bench underneath a trestle and in front of a beautiful pond in East Potomac Park.

It was time to get home! I had a long ride back and my knee had twinged up a bit, causing me to lose a little time. I had a long ride back home ahead of me, so I huffed my bike up the stairs to the 14th street bridge at Ohio Drive. The stairs now have metal slides on them so you can wheel your bike up them. Yay! No more carrying my bike on my shoulders up the stairs!

Once on the bridge, I began racing the metro trains all the way to Alexandria, before continuing south en-route to home and work. Thanks for riding along with me!