Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove and US Navy Merchant Marine Memorial

Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove
and
US Navy Merchant Marine Memorial

Type of Exercise: Cycling/Biking
Biking Stats:
Distance: 26.62 mi
Duration: 2 hr 15 mins

Having gone up to the Tidal Basin yesterday morning, I thought I would head up that way again to scoop up a few cool things just beyond the 14th Street bridge today.

So many who come to Washington DC and Northern Virginia visit all the downtown tourist spots. Most of the famous memorials are located in the district, BUT some of the most impressive and little known gems lie just outside the tourist zone. The LBJ Memorial Grove is just such a place.

Located along the George Washington Parkway on national park land, Lyndon Johnson’s memorial grove provides a gorgeous view of the district and the National Mall. Weary of the work of the presidency, Johnson would come to this very location often in order to unwind and escape. What better place to build his presidential memorial?

The park is situated in the Potomac River on Columbia Island, and it is separated from the Virginia side by the Boundary Channel. The Boundary Channel is the original Virginia shoreline, and it was named by an anonymous Army Corps of Engineers officer around the time of it’s creation. It was created when the river was dredged to deepen the channel and widen the river along the DC/Virginia shores in order to alleviate flooding and build up through the washing of silt and other materials down-river.. The island itself was named for the DC (Columbia) by another anonymous engineer, who worked in the district.

The most striking and prominent feature of this park is a large stone monolith, made from Texas granite (of course). Johnson was from Texas, and I’ve never met anyone from Texas who isn’t overly proud of that fact, so the composition of the monolith makes sense! Around the monolith are nice benches, and a beautiful stone mosaic platform with quotes from Johnson etched into slabs.

I met a couple at the stone monolith, who told me it was their first time there. I told them everything I knew about the monument (too much) and then let them be. They must have thought I was some obsessed LBJ enthusiast!

The park also consists of a grove with winding trails and picnic benches. On the other side of the park is the Pentagon and the Pentagon Lagoon Marina and boat launch. From here you can take boats out onto the Potomac River, or paddle around in the Pentagon Lagoon. The park was bustling with folks putting watercraft into the lagoon and moving their boat trailers around.

The park is full of beautiful white pine trees. Having grown up among white pine forests, it was extremely enjoyable to basque in the unique smell of the white pine tree needles, which form a beautiful dull red carpet on the grove floor. You can always tell a white pine tree by it’s signature 5-needle clutches. You can always remember how many needles should be in a white pine clutch, because you can count the needles by spelling W-H-I-T-E. The trunks are often sappy and stained…

Another beautiful spot along the river is the Navy Merchant Marine memorial. The monument sits right along the river-side, and in the late spring-early summer, it is surrounded by the most beautiful multi-colored tulips! The monument honors US military and Merchant Marine personnel who were lost at sea during the first world war. It can be seen across from East Potomac Park, gleaming in the sun on the shoreline, and I used to wonder what exactly it was, whenever I crossed the 14th Street Bridge and looked down. The monument was installed in 1934, after being cast from Aluminum in Cleveland and shipped to DC. In the sunshine on a clear day, the monument is quite shiny. It depicts crashing waves with seven sea gulls flying over top.

i needed to get home for dinner so I made my way back along the trail past the airport and through Alexandria. On the way, I passed a wedding at Orinoco park, and a street festival in old town.

Thanks for coming along with me!