Memorial Day Hike 2008: Much Less Water

Last year we found the rock slide on Cedar Run Trail which is still my favorite hike in the D.C. area. I'd have been happy to return this Memorial Day but I've been accused of being too rigid in my traditions, plus one of our merry band of hikers doesn't like water... or it might have something to do with the fact that we already had plans to hike Cedar Run again later this month :-)

Instead we selected a hike through Little Bennett Regional Park in Clarksburg, MD for Memorial Day. The hike was an easy 9.1 loop around the perimeter of the park, which made for pleasant hiking through mostly shaded trails but not so much for spectacular views.



Notes to Jon:

• If you don't print out a trail map at home you can use a photo of the park signs as a digital map

• We finally remembered to look up local ice cream spots before the hike and ended up at the quite satisfactory Country Cone Cafe in Germantown, MD

• Country Cone Cafe was perfect for this hike because the lactose intolerant among us could eat their frozen yogurt
  
  
• Looking for tether ball? Country Cone Cafe has you covered there as well
  

• While no one got any we certainly saw plenty of Poison Ivy (and spent quite a while debating what it looked like—are the leaves always shiny? Find out the way we did...)
  
  
• Hike times: Total time about 7 hours. Hike and lunch 4 hours 45 minutes. Left Ballston just after 10am. At trailhead by 10:45. Finished hiking about 3:30. Ice cream at 4:00 and home by 5:00
  
  
• The tool I use to geotag my photos—WWMX Location Stamper—doesn't play well with Picasa and requires the additional step of running something like Exiftool to adjust the version numbers
  
  
• I investigated embedding a geotagged slideshow in the post but haven't found a good option yet (I'd like something more interactive than the interesting solution Rocky found). For now I'll link to the new capability in Picasa and Google Maps which is fairly good and just lacks the ability to show a GPS track and easily embed the result in a blog