- Richmond World War II Memorial
- Belle Isle
- Manchester Floodwall
- Richmond Slave Trail
- Ancarrow's Landing and Rocket's Landing
- Mayo Island
- Richmond Heron Rookery
- Brown's Island
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We began at Tredegar Street parking lot, under the railroad tracks. The only real decision to make in this last second course was which way to go round. We decided clockwise and headed up the hill to our first checkpoint at the WWII Memorial. Our mission was to find and write down names of soldiers who matched our first and last initials. This was pretty easy since they're listed alphabetically but hey, was worth the hill climb to get warmed up.
Next we headed across the footbridge to Belle Island for CP 2, the rock skipping challenge at the South end of Belle Isle. We quickly discovered that the whole South end of the island is heavily vegitated and mucky, with nary a skipping rock to be found. Eager to get our heartbeats up and legs moving we decided to let this one slide and head over to the old hydroelectric plant The CP3 challenge was supposed to be to crawl into the open reservoir and retrieve some trash form the cistern. With a high river, this thing was full of water, rather than its usual mostly dry state. Foiled again. We crossed the footbridge to the South side of the James, headed West to the stairs up to riverside drive. Here we took a couple of laps up and down.
At the top, Jason spotted a playground with fitness trail and suggested we go do an impromptu workout therein. We jogged over and went round the course. It was really designed for the geriatric crowd with lots of exercises for the kind of basic balance and strength needed for fall avoidance. We made the most of it but probably got more out of the quotes we read off of each station.
CP 4 and 5 were to climb up on some old bridge pillars by the Manchester Bridge climbing area and strike a pose. Our handiwork can be seen below.
We headed under Manchester Bridge to the flood wall walk. The James was really pumping today and we stopped to snag a few pics of the high water.
Checkpoint 6 was to place a small trinket behind a bush on the way out to Ancarrow's Landing via the Richmond Slave Trail. I forgot to bring a trinket in the morning rush but ran over to said bush and faked it for good measure. I must say that bush looked more impressive from space when the shot must have been taken in Summer.
Out at the landing we bagged CP 7 by snapping a shot of the Boathouse Restaurant across at Rocket's Landing.
The next few CPs were along the trail leading back. They included climbing down under a small bridge, dipping some water out of the James from under the I-95 Bridge and heading back along the boulder field. HERE is where we found "Chuck". Chuck was an old railroad tie that had been beaten up by the river and lot most (but not all) of his heft. We decided he looked lonely and needed to be transported the 2.5 miles back to our car.
Soon after picking up our little friend we did a time check. *shit*, we're never going to make it back by our 9:30 cutoff time. Time to take the direct route back to Tredegar. We humped it across Manchester Bridge, skipping CP 11 (kick a cell tower on Mayo Island) passing Chuck back and forth when we'd had our fill.
We dipped down onto the Pipeline trail behind a couple of Joggers. They graciously let us pass stating that "People carrying logs have the right of way". Trotting down the trail, we both noticed the impressive height of the river and that areas that usually sported sandy beaches were well under water. Below is a picture of Jason w/ Chuck.
I didn't snap a picture but if you look left from the pipeline trail, you can see a small Island that is a designated Heron Rookery. Apparently Great Blue Herons were almost non-existent in this area due to pollution in the James River corridor. The last 20 years has seen great improvements in the James River water quality and now over 40 Heron's use this island as their nesting ground. As a testament to these positive changes, I see a Heron nearly every time I ride or run down around the James River Park System. Today was no exception as we bagged CP 12 by seeing dozens of Herons up in the trees.
The pipeline trail consists at first of a steel walkway, built over top of a large drainage pipe. As you traverse it East -> West, it degrades into just some concrete poured atop the pipe. Finally the pipe goes underground at the end... wait... I meant under water? Yep, the trail was flooded for the last 40 yards to the trees. Rather than adding on the extra mile by backtracking, we decided to try our luck with the submerged trail. The current was strong enough that even sideways, the only way to make forward progress was to heel-toe wiggle our lead foot forward until we had enough room to slide our back food up into the eddy it created and plant. We quickly decided it was acceptable to chuck Chuck and focus on the task at hand. (Sorry Chuck, better luck next time).
We made our crossing successfully but, due to the frigid water temperature, we couldn't feel our legs for several minutes after leaving the river. No need for a post-workout ice bath today! Jason and I both learned the valuable lesson of needing to wear our longer spandex underoos. We were both chaffing pretty badly on inner thighs due to poor clothing choice. This wasn't helped by soaking wet (and now heavy) pants but the icy water was enough of a shock to the senses that we were both reinvigorated for the final 3/4 mile back to the car.
We even took the time for our last checkpoint of dancing the running man on Brown's Island where the stage usually sits. All in all a solid workout at 8ish miles of trekking with some fun challenges along the way. The good feeling is quickly sobered by the realization that we only humped it for 2.25 hours with light or no packs and were limping around and pretty tired for the rest of the day.
Gotta start somewhere!
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