On Tuesday, we were going to part ways with the rest of the family. They were headed to New York City for the second half of the week. We decided to stick around DC for another two days before heading back home Thursday.
We had the rental car until 7 p.m. on Tuesday so why not go for a spin? I was interested in going to the coast but when doing research on sightseeing in the region, I came across Great Falls National Park. The photos online were beautiful so why go hiking and see it for ourselves! The rest of the family liked the idea too so they followed us to the falls before continuing their drive north. It was a hot but gorgeous day!
Great Falls is where the Potomac River builds up speed through the Mather Gorge. The park stretches 800 acres and is just 15 miles from Washington, D.C.
There are several great lookouts along a short hiking path. We hit one with the family for a few photos before they left for their road trip and we took off on foot along the trail. We took our time in the heat and downed our water bottles not far from the start – should have brought more! I used our slow pace to play with settings on the camera.
Some pretty adventurous climbs down some jagged rocks took us to the river level below the falls. The elevation of the falls didn’t appear much higher than that of the Falls on the Big Sioux River, but the spread is much wider and longer so the water appears to move a bit faster.
They also have this great flood marker to show where the water levels had hit at historic levels. This was upstream from the gorge (below), which is two walls of rock that bottleneck the river. So when the gorge can’t handle the water, it backs up and floods here (especially during a spring thaw). The water levels were extremely low when we visited compared to some of the photos I saw online. So much more of the rocks are exposed at the falls and you could clearly see the water level lines on the rock walls along the gorge.
We were able to find an area to climb down the rock wall to the water level. It took some time navigating the steep rocks, but the water was awesome! We learned on our way in that there was no swimming or wading allowed (and we know what is considered wading!) so we sat and put our feet in for a bit and soaked in the sun. I guess people who do swim don’t have the best luck surviving the water. But with the levels so low, we did see several people taking their chances.
The photo below shows what we climbed up but it doesn’t do it justice for the height or how steep it was. Going up was much easier than going down as it was much easier to grab onto the sharp rocks to climb up instead of trying to avoid falling down them. :o)
After a few hours up there, we took the short walk back and drove a bit farther upstream above the falls to check out north end of the park and found an area covered with trees that had marshy pools with fish swimming in them. There was a spillway farther upstream and everything was amazingly calm and quiet. So peaceful!
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