Our first stop of the day was Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, the only NPS site dedicated to the performing arts. The site was created by the donation of land by Catherine Filene Shouse:
One of several performance spaces at the park:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their patches and badges:
Our next stop was Great Falls Park, a unit of George Washington Memorial Parkway:
M tried out the whitewater kayak in the visitor center:
The visitor center had an impressive Junior Ranger display:
The Great Falls:
The now-dry Patowmack Canal, built by a company founded by George Washington before he was president. This portion of the canal was a bypass for Great Falls. The canal was ultimately a financial failure:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:
We next visited the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park:
This park preserves the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the successor to the Patowmack Canal. This canal maintained a stable water level, as opposed to the Patowmack Canal, whose water level was tied to the river’s water level. This canal operated from 1830 to 1936. The visitor center is adjacent to lock 20:
The canal boat Charles E. Mercer:
A mule would walk along the path on the far side of the canal and pull the canal boat along:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their Junior Ranger badges:
Our next stop was Clara Barton National Historic Site, which shares a parking lot with the NPS site Glen Echo Park, a defunct amusement park converted into a public arts and culture site:
This house, built for Clara Barton when she was in her 70s, served as the first headquarters for the organization she founded, the American Red Cross:
The house is closed for repairs, but we were able to walk around the building:
We walked over to Glen Echo Park:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their Junior Ranger badges:
There was a separate workbook that focused on the desegregation protests at Glen Echo Park in the 1960s:
The kids also completed the workbook for George Washington Memorial Parkway, of which Glen Echo Park is a unit:
There was also a workbook for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which drew on knowledge gained over the last few days at Gettysburg, Monocacy, Harpers Ferry, Antietam, and Manassas:
This ranger station is the administrative headquarters for Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial, so we completed that workbook here as well:
We walked the grounds of the park:
Various buildings in the former amusement park have been converted to art workshops and galleries. We briefly visited the glass blowing studio:
A bumper car from the amusement park:
Goofing off on the way back to the RV:
We drove northeast to overnight at the Kemp Mill Synagogue, where we will be staying through Shabbos.
See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
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