MD C&O Canal Section 5: Noland's Ferry to Brunswick

Spring is full-on and our winter views of the Potomac are now becoming screened by bright green new growth across the flood plain forest. The canal is sometimes dry, sometimes watered. Where there is water there are red-belly sliders and painted turtles hauled out on logs. We heard our first bull frog of the year and a few trilling toads. Pileated woodpeckers were everywhere, as were red-bellied woodpeckers and northern flickers. 

Blue Phlox

Golden Ragwort.

Paw Paw blossoms

Redbuds, Dogwods, and Paw Paw trees were all in bloom - and with the Paw Paws there were our first Zebra Swallowtails for the year.  There were gigantic old Sycamores and ancient old Maples. Boxelder and Tulip Poplar filled in the spaces between the old ones and the river.  But with all the blossoms and buzzing bumblebees and flitting butterflies there was the constant hum of diesel engines and rhythmic rattle and thump of freight and coal trails. Some were just yards from the path and we stopped to watch them all rumble by giving a wave to every engineer. 

Point of Rocks B&) Tunnel (unused)

Point of Rocks Station (c. 1930s) 

Two historic railroad towns are located along this stretch of C&O, Point of Rocks and Brunswick. Of special interest to me was the cliff face at Point of Rocks on the wide curve of river where we heard Turkey Vultures nesting above, Ravens, too. Later, while having late lunch at Points of Rocks station, my sister saw a Peregrine Falcon heading for the cliffs. Ravens are making a big comeback along the Potomac cliffs from Point of Rocks through Western Maryland and its always great to hear them croaking so close by.

Catoctin Aqueduct

Collapsed aqueduct after a flood.

We walked over the fully restored Catoctin Aqueduct and over a board bridge around a washed out culvert which seems to be in line for some repair work. All the while the trains rumbled by until within a mile of Brunswick we began to hear the crash of rail cars and hum of idling diesel engines. Our last mile and a half was crowded with scouts and families on bikes and walking dogs, many of them staying at the campground that sits right on the canal road. It was wonderful to see everyone out and about and being very considerate with masks on while passing us two slow pokes. What really got my attention while passing the campground was the smell of burgers cooking! OMG. So of course we had to go get our late lunch at Boxcar Burgers in town. A great 11.5 mile day followed by a great burger!

Dryad's Saddle, Cerioporus squamosus

OMG were these burgers delicious! 

Till next time, C&O 

MD C&O Canal Section 4: Dickerson Conservation Area to Noland's Ferry, 6 mi.

My sister and I continued our walk on the C&O Canal Towpath where we left off in the fall, at Dickerson Conservation Area to finish at Noland's Ferry six miles upriver. This time we were graced with the good company of nephew Andy. The canal and the river were both full of spring rain and full, bright sun. It was cold, though, with a hard-charging north wind. Even so, woodland wildflowers were beginning to bloom and there were turtles sunning by the hundreds in the canal. There were dozens of Whitetail Deer browsing the forest and a handsome Great Blue Heron in his breeding finery, woods-walking along the inside canal path hunting for frogs. 

Dutchman's Breeches

Virginia Bluebells

Spring Beauties

This stretch is well above the furious Great Falls and here the Potomac shows its age-old penchant for meandering within the broad flood plain - sweeping turns, old oxbow bends, flooded bottom woods.  One moment the river is flowing fifty feet below us and another it is far across the plain where hikers are running their dogs on shoreline trails. The Virginia Bluebells are popping up in the bright sun and some are in bloom dotting the whole wide wet woods in patches of blue.   

Loch 27, near the old Spinks Ferry crossing

The Potomac is wide and shallow as we approached Lock 27 and its meadows of bluebells. It was once the site of a small ferry crossing located between the busy ferry landings at White's and Edward's downstream and other smaller crossings upstream at Noland's and beyond. In low water come late summer and fall, the Confederate Army found it easy to walk across here and in so doing attempted to destroy the canal structures to disrupt commerce between river towns and Washington. They weren't successful thanks to lock keeper Thomas Walter who negotiated (pleaded) against their actions and saved this section from destruction. 

Little Monocacy Culvert with my sister to give scale.

Between Lock 27 and the beautiful culvert arch over the Little Monocacy are the ruins of Dr. Boyd's late 1700's homestead built of familiar red sandstone, but not much of the structure remains except the chimney and hearth. Of course, my nephew Andy and I had to (almost) tumble down the wooded embankment to look back at the beautiful stonework of the culvert.  Just a half mile ahead was the amazingly beautiful Monocacy Aqueduct where we spent some time exploring above, below, and all around this incredible structure that floated canal boats over the wide mouth of the Monocacy River at the Potomac. Swallows twittered-soared out from under the watered arches and fed on early insect hatches. The stone, quarried and transported from Sugarloaf Mountain several miles away, gleamed in the sunlight. It has recently (2005) undergone an extensive restoration and clearing so now hikers and bikers can walk the canal bed over the river. 

Monocacy Aqueduct

Biking through the (unwatered) aqueduct.

Beyond the aqueduct and from the canal towpath we could look deep into open forest that will soon be veiled with greenery. A large herd of Whitetails browsed just across the canal and speaking softly to one gentle doe, we were able to visit with her for some time as others slowly made their way across the fresh green forest bottom munching and wagging their tails. These woods once contained the old Monocacy Trail, a pathway that carried the Tuscarora and Shawnee into South-Central Pennsylvania, although the southern Tuscarora did live temporarily here (hence the modern road name nearby of the Tuscarora Road) on their log walk of displacement from North Carolina in the early 1700s. The area is rich with indigenous archeology dating from 5000 B.C.E. to the mid-1600s and place  names reflect this long, sometimes tumultuous occupation of native people along the river and out on its islands.  

It is good to remember that these landscapes were peopled long before the canal works lent its iconic feats of stonework to the experience of being in this place. The land between the Potomac and the Susquehanna, my home river many days' walk to the north and east, was contested in-between-land where northern and southern tribes fought over resources, raided each other's encampments and towns, and generally made settler expansion difficult if not impossible in these parts before the 1730s. The Piedmont land between the rivers was made inhospitable by war parties for both local tribes and early settler farmers sent into this dangerous frontier by Colonials eager to claim more territory.  More on that history as we progress further along... 

Bluebell meadow.

From the road bridge ruins at Noland's Ferry. 

Noland's Ferry

Our six mile stroll ended at Noland's Ferry, where we were surrounded by the local high school cross-country running team stretching after their towpath running session. We climbed the old bridge ruin to the grassy flat there and had our lunch, looking down at walkers, hikers, bikers, and doggos.  It wasn't our longest walk on the C&O by far but it was one of the most beautiful stretches, a welcome end to winter - though we did shiver like mad up there in the wind on the bridge!

Whites Ford to Noland's Ferry

Note:

White's Ferry was officially closed this past winter (2020) after operating since 1786 due to a long-standing land dispute with Rockland Farm on the Virginia side, but we were happy to hear that negotiations are underway to resolve the dispute and that a local conservation-minded  businessman has stepped in to help reorganize operations and reopen the ferry.  https://wjla.com/news/local/businessman-purchases-historic-potomac-ferry-operation

Nooooo!

On a brighter note, the White's Ferry Grill is still open and DELICIOUS. Thank goodness they had some sweatshirts for sale for because I completely underdressed for this hike. Brrrrrr. 

Sister Laura and nephew Andy on this cold (!) six miler. 

MD C&O Canal Section 3: McKees Beshers to Dickerson Conservation Area

For our next section of our C&O Towpath walk, my sister and I did the 14 mile stretch from McKees Beshers Wildlife Management Area to Dickerson Conservation Area in Montgomery County, MD. This section takes up a huge river bend in the Potomac. It was a fine misty day with a low cloud deck and a few sprinkles early on, but with beautiful filtered light we were snapping wildflower pictures and shots of fungi and forest the whole way. 

Large-Flowered Leafcup, Polymnia uvedalia - a nice find!

The canal was built on the bend and in places it hugs tall cliffs while the enormous flood plain spread out towards the Potomac. It was nice to find a hardy Large-Flowered Leafcup growing right on the canal. In New York this is a threatened plant and as far west as Wisconsin, it receives protection in many conservation areas. It's not rare here, but not common either. Its superpower is surviving floods along moody rivers, anchored tight with massive root systems, able to re-emerge even when buried beneath many feet of flood-built sandbar and silt bank. 

Rough Horsetail, Equisetum hyemale - a "living fossil" 

Another alluvial survivor is Rough Horsetail, a plant that has survived since Devonian times, four-hundred million years ago, when it first appears in fossil records. This period was when much of the surrounding rust iron sands were deposited from eroding mountain ranges to form the thick red sandstone cliffs that rise up along the canal. We imagined the landscape of the Devonian where this first plant emerged - a drifting continent of the southern hemisphere, Gondwana, that would eventually drift north and become part of the great Supercontinent Pangea. Horsetails hung on for the ride and have survived eons of change. 

A very young tree bank hedge - roots will knit a vulnerable bank in place. 

A mature tree hedgerow to shade the path and anchor the rise. 

Along the towpath (thank you Justice William O. Douglas) trees grow purposefully along the canal. It's hard to know which were planted by nature and which were planted (or protected) by people long ago to serve the needs of canal operations. Either way, the utility of trees in the ancient art of hedge building for farming, fencing, and road support, the park service approach to managing them seems to be paying heed to this old tradition. There were many tagged and flagged trees along the way marked for care, removal, or trimming and there was a stretch of new tree-hedge that will serve to hold banks in place as the open hedge matures. It's great insurance against the damaging floods here.  

Smooth Blue Aster - a fall beauty.

Fall Phlox, Phlox paniculata 

Gold Moth cat, Basilodes pepita - in a "you can't see me" head tuck 

Flooding is part of the annual cycle of the life of a Piedmont river. There have been some real whoppers in my lifetime here on the Susquehanna and the general store/cafe at White's Ferry was sure to remind us that the biggest and most destructive floods of the Mid-Atlantic have happened within living memory. I remember like it was yesterday when Tropical Storm Agnes dropped feet of rain in our area of Southern PA/ Northern MD in 1972. Our family was stranded in the creek valley where we lived, surrounded by a lake of water. A mother Bobcat and her kittens took shelter in our basement and floated happily around my father's office on a sofa cushion until the flood subsided. A National Guard helicopter dropped food, emergency supplies and even the U.S. Mail (!). In this big bend of the Potomac, floods can be catastrophic particularly where people have built things like towns, canals, homes. But it was the Civil War that turned Edwards Ferry and Whites Ferry canal towns into militarized war zones caused both canal towns to decline and floods after the war swept what remained downstream.   

The developed floodplain often included ferry crossings and fords. 

The cycle of flood and saturated soils has been critical to such rich plant and animal life of the flood plain. But as easily as floods can deposit nutrient rich materials within these woods, they can just as easily remove them. Flood scouring creates interior ponds that fill with amphibian eggs and calling frogs. River boulders and large cobble are piled against enormous Sycamores that are more than able to bear the force and weight of moving water. Floods also carry seeds in and out, some native and others alien, invasive weeds. It seems this was a good year for Japanese Hops on the river bank. Ouch.

Wingstem, Actinomeris alterniflora, tall stems and floppy flowers.

Dryad's Saddle Cerioporus squamosus, a large 15" bracket fungi, holding water.

Wood Ear Fungus - a little flabby.

We assisted a Box Turtle, a heavy and healthy female, across a road and watched a Black Rat Snake explore a tree along the path. There were dozens of Painted Turtles hauled out on logs in the canal, their shells covered in pond weed and algae looking like great lumps of moss with heads. Frogs chirped and growled and barked and bellowed from the floodplain and the watered sections of canal and interior scour ponds, an amphibian paradise. 

Black Rat Snake, 4' and curious.

This old Maple shaded the lockhouse in the 1800s at Lock 26

Because a flood plain is a risky place to put a business or home and because there is fierce development that threatens to gobble up the natural heritage of Montgomery County, this river corridor is protected conservation land. For now this landscape serves as a natural commons, blending historic preservation with natural history and providing people with quiet sanctuary of protected lands - especially in these strange times. The idea of an ecological commons along this river is not new, however, as environmental historian James Rice argues in his book Nature and History of the Potomac Country (2009). I'll review that book for our next section hike and post it here.   

The Great Bend section. 

Notes:

A great collection of pictures of the old maple at Lock 26 https://www.canaltrust.org/discoveryarea/lock-26/

James Rice. Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. 

 

MD C&O Canal: Biking Out and Back - McKee Beshers WMA to Great Falls, 25 mi.

Early morning on the Potomac

In my quest to complete the C&O Canal Towpath Trail this year I set out to do a section by bike. My plan was to go very early and beat the 97-degree heat forecast for the afternoon so I left home at 5:30am and turned in to the McKee-Bershers Wildlife Management Area off River Road in Montgomery County, MD, by 7:30 am. As I lifted my bike off the rack I was greeted by a very long-winded Yellow-Billed Cuckoo somewhere in the dense forest between me and the dry canal ditch.  The air was cool and a slight breeze lifted off the Potomac River creating the tiniest of riffles on its surface. I began a twenty-five mile out-and-back to reach Great Falls Tavern where my sister and I left off during our camp-out week. In my bike's rear pack two frozen solid liter bottles of water began to melt. 

Towpath through McKee Beshers Wildlife Management Area (MD DNR) 

Unlike the groomed towpath from Georgetown to Great Falls, the towpath is more like an old dirt road full of lumps and bumps, dried up mud pits, and dips that hold pools of rainwater. With little rain these past weeks, the path was very dusty and I discovered another use for my pink flamingo face mask (thank you Slate Brewery!) to keep the dust and pollen out of my mouth and nose. I passed a crowded free camping area - open only to those hiking or biking the path - and sped south to find a nice pull-off in the woods near the boundary of the WMA. Immediately I was serenaded by another Yellow-Billed Cuckoo. He was joined by a Scarlet Tanager. Then a very close by - like in front of me in the woods but completely invisible - a Whip-poor-will repeated, repeated, repeated his call. I was thrilled! 

Phlox

Not so thrilled were three bikers who peddled slowly up to where I straddled my bike hoping to see the bird. "What the HELL is that?!" a very annoyed lady asked. She looked haggard, exhausted. Her partner, who never said a word, just looked at me sleepily. The third cyclist said that the bird sang right outside their tents All. Night. Long.  "It was brutal," he said. "Torture." I did my best to say something nice about the Whip-poor-will but my voice was drowned out by the bird. We peered into the trees. We looked so carefully. Nothing. Just a very loud bird. The bikers went on to finish the towpath at Georgetown. Not a bad start to my day, but a long hot finish for the cyclists peddling in the heat with very little rest. * A good birder friend of mine tells me that this WPW behavior could have been the bird being protective of chicks nearby. "They are LOUD and persistent in hopes that intruders will leave." 

Seneca Creek Aqueduct 

I was soon at Riley's Lock at the Seneca Creek Aqueduct and took another break there. Canada Geese and their nearly grown goslings occupied the muddy shores. The busted out arch held a number of swallow nests on the exposed I-beam but I didn't see any occupied. I suppose they've all fledged now. 

It was not yet 8am and a few kayakers were just putting in. I stayed long enough to watch them enter the river. A Bald Eagle cackled from the edge of the river near where they turned upstream.  I love the family history of Riley's Lock and roamed around imagining the Riley family at work and play here. One of the Riley's young children drowned here and this caused Mrs. Riley to move the family, minus Mr. Riley who worked the lock, to move up the hill away from the river to a tenant house they owned.

Potomac River

"My father came home in November and stayed until March. That was a real joy, to have him home all winter. My father just stayed at home and worked around the house. He had to go down to the lock every day to see that everything was all right and that the lock house was kept locked up. He walked down in the morning and came back. I don't know what other (chores) he had down there; you get up early and went to school, and you didn't know what your father did all day." 

- Helen Riley Bodmer, Riley Family History, 2009 NPS

Dry aqueduct over Seneca Creek

The aqueduct is a ruin, washed away in 1971. The National Park Service stabilized the surviving structure but it will never again hold water. This is a great stop to observe the Seneca Red Sandstone quarried locally. The canal served as a freight service to carry this Triassic sandstone to Washington where it was used to build the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall as well as hundreds of other buildings in the city. It quarries grey and over time will turn red with exposure to water and air. It is some of the most beautiful stone when highly polished. I have a little polished slab in my office. It simply radiates red. Somewhere deep in the woods on the other side of Seneca Creek is the ruin of the cutting mill but it's summer and I can't see in. Enough of my water was unfrozen to make for a long swig. 

Riley's Lockhouse 

A few miles on and I came to Violettes Lock also built of Seneca Red Sandstone. Here the canal is reliably watered again. Paddlers who enter the Potomac at this access point can catch a fair number of fast miles running the rapids and ledges downstream to Pennyfield Lock. They can take out at Pennyfield and paddle the canal back to Violettes Lock. I stopped at the flooded woods just before Pennyfield and added Green Heron to my list, again by call, not a sighting. Summer is when I bird almost entirely by ear when in or near the woods. The Green Heron's "skeewaulk!" is part of my summer's auditory landscape anytime I am near a wetlands or river. 

Violette's Lock

Bluffs of Blockhouse Point

It was almost 9am and the towpath was beginning to get a tad busy. I wore my mask dutifully all the way to Great Falls since I was passing more and more walkers. It wasn't bad at all and I really appreciated the dust and pollen protection. Seems I was not the only one trying to beat the heat and the pandemic. Everyone wore masks. The big bend on the wide canal gave great views of the massive bluffs at Blockhouse Point, the top of which served as a Union lookout station manned by the 19th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. No real action happened here, but when Union troops were called to Washington to reinforce the ring forts surrounding the city, Confederate soldiers were able to cross the river here undetected and set destroying the earth and timber fort. 

Starting to get busy

I rode into Great Falls and joined a Sunday morning crowd of beat-the-heat folks gawking at the river as it begins its drop through Mather Gorge. I gawked, too, and added a Cormorant to my list. It was getting hot so I didn't stay long. I took the last swig from waterbottle #1 and chomped down a sausage stick (thank you Grand View Farm!) and started the "uphill" ride back to McKee Beshers WMA. By the time I got to Violette's Lock I was pouring sweat but - LO! I added Kingfisher to my list while I draped my sweat soaked body over a boulder. 

Floodplain forest.

River view near Blockhouse Bluffs. 

My ride finished by 10:30am and I was soon on the road in my un-air conditioned car  to Pennsylvania. All the windows were down for the two hour drive home but LO! AGAIN! I added Turkey Vulture, Red Shouldered Hawk, Red Tailed Hawk, and Turkey to my day list while gasping for air out the window. Next section will be from McKee Beshers to Monocacy Aqueduct, a 15 mile walk or ride - hopefully beginning to catch some early fall migrants. 



Notes:

Riley Family History http://www.candocanal.org/histdocs/Riley-Family-History.pdf

Seneca Cultural History https://www.nps.gov/articles/975434.htm#4/35.46/-98.57

I never saw any of these birds. Summertime birding for me is usually by ear. Here's what I heard:

Scarlet Tanager https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Scarlet_Tanager/sounds

Yellow-Billed Cuckoo https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow-billed_Cuckoo

Eastern Whip-poor-will https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Whip-poor-will

Green Heron https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Green_Heron/sounds