The Potomac River is truly magical this time of year. Every time I cross over it or drive along the parkway, I envy those out kayaking on the water with the autumn leaves floating down. For being next to such a large city, it somehow manages to maintain its grandeur. One day as I drove along the parkway, I couldn't take my eyes off the beautiful trees and decided to pull over into a parking area alongside the river. As I stared ahead in awe, my son dropped his pants and peed on a tree. I didn't realize what was going on, of course, until a foreign tourist in a rental car next to me started laughing and pointing in my direction.
Maryland has this surreal quality about it. It is a very populated, metropolitan region full of bustling cities. Fairly close together you have metropolitan cities such as Washington D.C., Baltimore, Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, and then all of the outlying cities that are also pretty large such as Silver Spring, Rockville, Columbia, Tysons Corner, Kensington, and so on. Yet, you can drive just a few miles in any direction and you feel like you are in suburbia. The landscapes of winding roads and open fields are absolutely serene. You can completely forget that you are in a city with some of the worst rush-hour traffic in the country as soon as you're outside of the city. And I mean AS SOON as you're outside of the city. We live about 10 miles outside of downtown D.C., yet we feel like we are in the countryside. It's beautiful here. I found this Maryland photo online, but it very accurately represents what the streets look like up where I live. On my way to church, the gym, or the nature center, this is what kind of road I drive on each and every day.
I always wanted to live somewhere with tree-lined streets. I used to love the beginning of the Cosby Show precisely because it would show the townhouses lined up with the canopy of trees over the road. This photo is of Capitol Hill in D.C., but most of the streets here look like this one. I would have taken a photo of my own street, but we have some road construction going on and the orange barrels don't do much for the scenery at the moment. In fact, I need to post some photos of our first house sometime soon! As soon as I unpack those final boxes and hang up those final pictures, I will get some photos up here. Give me until Christmas :)
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