Sky Meadows State Park – savemaple.org

This is a short, relatively easy mountain day hike with a some excellent views, a good workout, and nice trail.

It took me four hours car-door-to-car-door. That was about three hours of walking, to complete the 6-mile round-trip, plus an hour for eating and looking at the views.

In hindsight, for me, this was a more-fun-less-challenging hike than the “direct route” to the Sky Meadows State Park overlooks, the Sky Meadows Piedmont trail. If nothing else, there’s just more hiking “stuff” than you get from walking straight uphill, in a grazed meadow: stream crossings, trees, and so on.

In addition to a less-steep slope and more variety in the landscape, this AT-based route gives you better views as you walk. With the Sky Meadows Piedmont trail, the view is all behind you, as you walk straight uphill. But with this longer approach, you get a lot of nice views as you walk along the top of the mountain. E.g., your classic pipeline cut, from this hike:

The hike

Start from the parking lot/trail head just north of U.S. 50, at Ashby Gap. That is, on the other side of U.S. 50 from your destination, Sky Meadows State Park.

Take the short blue-blazed trail from the parking lot down to the Appalachian Trail, and turn left.

This takes you down to Route 50. Cross.

After you cross 50, and walk alongside it for a bit, then do the long uphill slog to the top of the mountain. The grade isn’t bad. I recollect that I did this without stopping.

I also recollect that the thrill of trudging uphill ran out long before the uphill did.

But the grade was moderate enough that I could, in effect, pick a slow pace and keep going. Just breathe hard. By contrast, the other access to the overlooks — via the Sky Meadows State Park Piedmont trail — is short steep climb, during which I run out of breath and stop a few times. As do most, I think. Or at least, would like to think.

Most of the trail is pleasant walking, with only the occasional rocky bits.

Around mile 1.5 or so, you start to see signposts for trails in and around the state park. At that point, just follow the signs to the Whitehouse overlook.

You pick up the Ambassador Whitehouse trail in the middle of a large open area. That takes you down to the Whitehouse overlook. (On some older maps, confusingly, Piedmont memorial overlook.) This land is not part of the state park, but is owned by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a trust of some sort. The odd tableau, behind the wire fencing, that (as of this writing) you cannot access, appears to be mainly a paean to the founders of that trust. I believe the overlook is currently named for Charles S. Whitehouse.

From there, continue on the Ambassador Whitehouse trail, then follow the signs to the Piedmont overlook:

If you want more exercise, walk down this hill to the visitors center. It’s a stiff walk down, and a stiffer hike back up. Or just turn around and hike back to your car. (Or, any of several color-blazed trails in Sky Meadows park will take you back up to the Appalachian Trail. I vaguely recall that anything that says “Ridge” will do that. As long as you turn right (north) when you get to the Appalachian Trail (blazed white), you’ll get back to Ashby Gap.)

The hiker

The weather forecast called for rain showers moving in around 11 AM. Then rain for the rest of the week. If I wanted to take a hike this week, I needed a short hike, plus an early start, in order to be back at the car by 11 AM. To avoid the rain.

My wife mentioned Sky Meadows State Park, for a nice short hike. Lovely hikes there, but the 8 AM park opening time makes for an awkward trip. Instead, I parked at the Appalachian Trail (AT) access, just the other side of Route 50 from Sky Meadows, and walked to the “top” of Sky Meadows, from there, via the AT.

This allowed me to start as early as I pleased. Which plays to my strengths as an old guy, as I wake up early. In any case, I left Vienna VA well before dawn (about 5:15 AM). There was an orange-colored full moon, just setting, with enough cloud cover to make it look smokey. Nice. But consistent with rain in the forecast.

I-66 West was fast-but-orderly traffic. I did my best to fit in with the pack. By Gainesville, traffic density had moderated.

Once you veer off I-66 — at 17 North, to Paris (via Delaplane) — things get downright picturesque. On this trip, dawn was breaking, the clouds were rosy above a shadowed landscape of rolling hills and foggy pastures and creeks. It looked like an illustration from a children’s book.

But I was driving. This is not a good road for driving. So I have no photos. But it is a scenic drive, at that time of the morning.

In any case, I parked at the trail head around 6:15 AM. Got back four hours later, around 10:15 AM. The return hike goes about half an hour faster than the outbound hike, owing to its being mostly gentle downhill.

Can my joints take the abuse?

The big question for me is whether my leg joints can take the stress of mountain hiking. To that end, I’m (quite rationally) eating an ounce of hydrolyzed collagen a day (the equivalent of about a half-gallon of Jell-O every day, protein wise. I’ve gone through the details in just-prior posts.)

On the morning of the day after this last hike, I think I can say that providing an abundant supply of the amino acids needed for building collagen seems to speed the healing of my hips and knees post-hike. I spend less time, in less joint pain, than I did with earlier hikes. This morning, I pass my “ADL test” — I can perform the normal activities of daily living without making old-man noises about my joint pains. That’s new, and I attribute it to my new-found goal of eating an ounce of hydrolyzed collagen powder a day. The reasoning and rationale for this are in just-prior posts here.

But it’s not clear that it’s smart to continue with these mountain hikes. The jolting, weight-bearing exercise of mountain hiking is just the ticket for building strong leg bones. Bones respond to that shock-loading by getting stronger. Joints, on the other hand, simply wear out. Maybe all I’m doing with this better recovery time is putting a smile on my face, as I hasten my progress toward debility and the need for joint replacement.

It’s a tough call. But I do like to hike. In Virginia. In the spring. For a whole lot of different reasons.

All said and done, I think I’d best hike while I can. Let the long run take care of itself.

Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can for my suffering hips and knees. First, good boots. Then, trekking poles. And now, a diet abundant in the amino acids needed to repair collagen.

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Day trips: Great Falls, Maryland and Sky Meadows, VA.

Sky Meadows is one of our under-appreciated Virginia State Parks. The main hike at Sky Meadows (above) is a seemingly-easy half-mile walk up a hillside meadow with nice views. It’s only a half-mile to the top, but that’s at a constant 18% grade.

We (pant) took many (pant) pauses to (pant) admire the view. On a clear day (e.g., without forest fire smoke), you can see the tall buildings at Reston, VA, roughly 50 miles away.

Roses are red, boysenberries are purple.

My little patch of berries is doing well. Black raspberries have peaked. Blackberries (above) are doing OK. Currants and gooseberries are about done. Wineberries are still to come.

My boysenberries are now ripening. Three years ago I put in a few boysenberry plants. I did this for the novelty, as I can’t recall ever having seen boysenberries for sale in this area (Virginia). Now, having grown some, I understand why. Technically, they are cane fruits. In some climates, they may in fact produce stout canes. But in my yard, they are low, creeping, sprawling plants. They are hard to grow, in that it’s all-but-impossible to weed around them. They’re a pain to pick, as the berries are borne just a few inches off the ground.

A ripe boysenberry looks like a purple blackberry, as shown above. When less than totally and fully ripe, boysenberries and blackberries taste about the same to me. But fully ripe, each berry yields a few seconds of its own distinct flavor. Boysenberries are different from blackberries, but I would not say that a fully-ripe boysenberry is better than a fully-ripe blackberry. And blackberries are vastly easier to grow, in my climate.

In both cases, once the fruit is fully ripe, it’s very soft and won’t travel. Near as I can tell, the only way to taste a fully-ripe blackberry is to grow it. And around here, the only way to taste a fresh boysenberry, at all, is to grow it.

Bike rehab success.

I must have made the right choices in rehabbing my wife’s BikeE recumbent bike (Post #1978 and earlier). This, because she was gadding about town, on that bike, for a couple of hours today. There’s the bike, on the W&OD trail this morning.

My sole useful advice was to mind her coccyx, in the sense that a long bike ride on a recumbent can leave you with a sore butt, particularly if you haven’t done any riding in a while.

This bike rehab project remains unfinished. I managed to get the bike into ride-able condition, but I have been unable to get the three-speed rear hub and other bearings serviced. My local bike shop took on the task, then declined to work on the bike due to a damaged shock mount. (Apparently my 15-year-old repair of that mount left them unimpressed.)

This is the problem with riding what is, in effect, an antique. I need to find another bike shop in my area that can rebuild a Sachs 3×7 rear hub. That’s a bit of a trick, given that every part for those has been out of production for a couple of decades.

Poor garlic yield

This year marks my fourth attempt at growing garlic in my back yard garden. This year I bought seed garlic (i.e., big heads with big cloves) from a local grower, made sure the soil had adequate nutrients including sulfur, and generally I Did What They Told Me To Do. Including planting after our nominal first frost date in the fall.

Once again, my dreams of growing garlic heads the size of my fist are unrealized. In fact, this is shaping up to be my fourth failure at growing garlic. As with my prior attempts, my heads of garlic are tiny. About half of my garlic is still in the ground, but it’s clear that most or all of my garlic heads will be on order of 1.5″ diameter or so. Almost but not quite unusable.

At this point, I’ve tried using different garlic varieties, planting times, backyard locations, and soil amendments and fertilizers. But I always get the same result.

I suspect that I just don’t have enough sunlight to grow full-sized garlic. My garlic bed gets about 5 hours of direct sunlight a day. Growing guides variously recommend “at least six hours”, and in some cases, eight-to-ten hours of direct sunlight per day. Garlic doesn’t have a whole lot of leaf area, and as a consequence, I’m guessing it really needs more direct sunlight than is available in my back yard.

Plant propagation: Snip-and-dip success, air layering fail.

Seven weeks ago, I started to propagate some schip (skip) laurels by two methods: Air-layering, and snip-and-dip (Post #1967).

The snip-and-dip plants are thriving, as shown above. Seven weeks ago, these were green branch tips that I snipped off, dipped in rooting hormone, stuck in wet potting soil, then kept moist and out of direct sunlight. These cuttings are obviously thriving.

Air layering skip laurels, by contrast, has been a total dud (above). The internet told me I’d have a big ball of roots at the end of that cutting after just four weeks. After four weeks, I had nothing. After seven weeks, there are some little bumps on the bark that might, eventually, become roots. My guess is that for a schip (skip) laurel, I’d have to tend to that air-layered branch all summer to have any hope of having a root ball form. Snip-and-dip is a lot easier and in this case a lot more effective.

Sketchy no more.

The scene on the left is a particularly sketchy bit of sidewalk in my neighborhood, as of March 2024 (Post #1950). The scene on the right is the same stretch of sidewalk, now. Presumably, in the interim, the Town of Vienna Department of Public Works has been at work.

That was good to see, given that the Town, in Its infinite wisdom, has decided to tear up my street next year. This, due to free money from Covid.

The plan is to bury the roadside swales that have been there for half a century, widen the street, and almost manage to convert it into just another cookie-cutter suburban street. The point of which is to provide “a sidewalk” on my street. In this case, for reasons only apparent to DPW, the sidewalk will cross the street mid-block. Thus, when they are done, anyone wishing to walk down my block, on the sidewalk, will be required to cross the street in front of my house.

My bet is that nobody is going to use the sidewalk beyond that ridiculous crossing. Other than the geezers in the 100+ bed assisted living facility that the town permitted at the end of the block.

Which, although nobody will admit it, is why this one-block-long sidewalk has to cross the street mid-block. Because it’s not for residents on the block to use, it’s for benefit of the commercial establishment at the end of the block. (The sidewalk crosses the street in order to attach to the sidewalk directly adjacent to the assisted living facility).

But hey, if somebody else is paying for it, and you are in a use-it-or-lose-it situation, the more money it wastes, the better.

Anyway, kudos to the Town for putting the this particularly run-down bit of local sidewalk back into good repair.

I am not looking forward to next year’s makeover of my street. But the Town owns the right-of-way, and they can do pretty much whatever they damn well please with it. Which, apparently, is pretty much the Town’s view of the issue, as well.

Cultivating my first deadly toxic plant.

To the casual observer, that looks like a bunch of un-ripe cherry tomatoes. Those are actually potato fruit, what you get if you allow your potatoes to flower. These are quite toxic due to their high solanine content.