Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial, Arlington, Virginia
Hike 9 in 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles – Washington DC, Roosevelt Island is described as: “Metro-area hikers owe Theodore Roosevelt a grateful nod. During Roosevelt’s 1901-09 presidency, the country got a forest service and wildlife-refuge system, and the metro area had a hiker in the White House…The hike begins at the entryway to Theodore Roosevelt Island, which is surprisingly part of Washington, not Virginia. Long known as Analostan Island, it was a plantation until the Civil War and later a recreation area. Neglected for decades, it was bought by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association in 1931 and given up to the National Park Service. Taken on as a Civilian Conservation Corps project, the island was renamed, stripped of everything man-made, planted with 30,000 trees, and allowed to evolve as a nature preserve. The memorial was added in 1967.”
Parkrun
I had learned about parkrun (yes, it is lower case and one word) from work when I was researching regional running organizations to potentially collaborate with or support. Parkrun USA is a Brooks sponsored nationwide organization that began in 2012. The organization provides regional, free, timed 5k routes for walkers and runners to participate in on Saturday mornings. It has 73 locations and nearly 600,000 people have crossed a parkrun finish line.
parkrun is positive, welcoming and inclusive, there is no time limit and no one finishes last. Everyone is welcome to come along.
https://www.parkrun.us/
How incredible. We have 5 parkrun locations in our region, and it sounds too good to be true, so we of course wanted to find out. Roosevelt Island DC parkrun is where Barbarian Scientist and I decided would be our first event. And it was just as wonderful as it sounds. Both the island and the event.
The parking lot is located at the bridge to access the island, and although it is not a small lot, it is generally packed. Planning extra time to ensure you can park, or taking the metro, is necessary. On a Saturday morning there are -no exaggeration- hundreds of runners from different running organizations gathering and/or running through the area. So. Many. Runners. We were pumped.
Finding the event was easy. There were signs for it as soon as you get to the other side of the bridge. Maybe there even was a sign before you cross the bridge, I do not exactly recall. They have flags with the name as well as volunteers who are easily identified. The event began with a briefing for the first-timers, and then a several minute long group celebration of any and all possible milestones – tourists visiting, birthdays, first-timers, 10th-timers, individuals who have reached personal bests, and more.
The trails on the island are dirt or boardwalk. Much of the island is very swampy, so the boardwalk is long. There are outlets along the boardwalk to allow birders (and there were many) their space while pedestrians pass by.
The dirt paths are well-maintained and many of the paths are quite wide. The trees are thick and even though the island is so close to the city, the sounds of the birds is more profound than the traffic. More than the birds and traffic, though, is the aircraft. This is really close to the Ronald Reagan Airport and there is no muffling the sounds of the low-flying aircraft.
The best graffiti – this is the saying that Thing 2 and I have between one another. We even have it tattooed. “I love you to the moon and back.” And more.
Parkrun created a 5k distance through the island by designing a sort of lasso shape race course. Basically, we wound through the island and got to see it all. There were a lot of runners. All of them were not even part of this exact event. It is very motivating to be in a community where not only are there great resources like parkrun, but that there are SO MANY people literally chasing shared goals.
The memorial to Roosevelt is the island as a whole, but of course there is a monument as well. The monument it huge, with many water features, benches, walls with quotes from Roosevelt, and of course a statue of him.
Roosevelt Island is beautiful. I am happy I had never been there before and that I was with Barbarian Scientist for it. The dense trees with boardwalks and dirt trails winding through it, filled with parkrun volunteers and runners and hikers like us, was just the thing I needed to be reminded I will be able to be happy living here.
No Responses