All my cycling friends have been posting pictures of lotus and lily blossoms from the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. Easy cycling access to the gardens is provided by the new Anacostia River Trail. This is good on two levels. First, well…, bikes, right? Second, finding the place in a car is a PIA.
Mrs. Rootchopper has tried to find it a number of times and ended up at athletic fields and in sketchy neighborhoods. We drove to the gardens today and,with the help of Google maps, found the athletic fields. Go technology!
We pulled up the area on the phone and we found it! Just back track and make an improbably turn down a side street in the neighborhood adjoining the athletic fields. Follow the road around a 90 degree right turn and over some epic speed bumps, and there it is!
Once clear of the parking area, you enter an area of green. It’s almost as if you are walking into a children’s book. The walkway takes you right to the main event: ponds filled with lotuses and water lilies. The leaves of the lotuses are about the size of a wheel cover on a car.
The spent blossoms (the green part inside the pedals in the picture below) look like water wands used by florists to gently water their plants. And the blossoms look like WOW!
Some of the stems stretch up as high as seven feet. The water lilies are much, much smaller and only inches above the water itself but their colors are electric. They look like little hallucinations.
We left after about 45 minutes. It was muggy and a storm was approaching.
We drove to Union Market in Northeast DC. The storm hit while we were driving down busy Benning Road. We could see a distinct rain line; it looked like a shower curtain liner. And a about as thick. It was over in 5 seconds. No lie. Weird.
At Union Market we headed to Arepa Zone. Arepa’s are a Venezuelan food that I learned of from my 50 States Ride buddy Emilia, who is from Caracas. Basically they are sandwiches that look like corn bread pies. Inside is goodness of your choosing. They aren’t all that big but they have mucho calories. Yummy.
There are some pictures over on my Flickr page.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 