HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I hope 2020 brings joy to everyone!
Here are a couple of unique hikes to help you enjoy.
Best "two-fer" ever -- especially in the frigid winter! First, we'll hike roughly 6 miles in Wheaton Regional Park. We'll start at Brookside Nature Center and hike at a moderate pace (about 3 mph) on dirt and paved trails through and outside the park and through Brookside Gardens' outdoor gardens. Most trails are flat but there are several hills. We'll stop from time to time for photos. Then we'll wind up at Brookside Gardens' indoor glass conservatory, where we'll dawdle for a while to enjoy the flowers and the tropical heat! Tropical flowers bloom indoors -- but surprisingly flowers even bloom outdoors in January. They might include winter-blooming orange/yellow witch hazels, pink hellebore flowers, and white snow-drops. We'll also be bombarded by other colors, such as the bright red berries of nandina plants. After the conservancy, we'll return to the Brookside Nature Center, where we'll eat our picnic dinner outdoors on the deck. (Dress very warmly!) Finally, around dusk, nocturnal southern flying squirrels will blast down from the tall treetops to nosh on their dinners -- or breakfasts. They eat raw, unshelled sunflower seeds that Brookside provides. If we're lucky, we'll squeal like little kids when about a dozen of these palm-sized critters with big doe-like eyes dash from tree to tree and huddle together on the feeders. Wildlife, however, is totally unpredictable. If it's too windy or an owl is hanging out, the little critters may not come.
SKUNKS AND SPIES:
https://www.meetup.com/sierrapotomac/events/267417808/
Skulking around Vienna, VA in January of 2001, you might just bump into Russian spies trading cash for secrets from an FBI agent turned traitor, a CIA building hidden in plain sight, and one of the oddest plants on the planet: skunk cabbage. Even ensconced in snow, this red, yellow, and green native wildflower, which creates its own heat, starts blooming in January. The spies are gone -- or are they? -- but the skunk cabbage remains -- near the former CIA building. We'll explore both nature & spies on this roughly 7-mile suburban hike.
. . . Then . . . we'll trek along tree-lined Foxstone Trail to Foxstone Park, the drop site where FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested for espionage on Feb. 18, 2001 for trading American secrets to Russia and the former Soviet Union for cold, hard cash. The FBI still calls him the most damaging spy in its history. Then we'll walk past Hanssen's former home (one of two places he lived in Vienna), which is a couple of blocks off the W&OD Trail.
