Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

This week’s new activity was relatively easy and inexpensive (FREE!).  Which was good, because my first couple of adventures via my trip to Quebec (Nordic spa, Ice Hotel, tobogganing, and snowshoeing) cost me more than expected, due to my friends’ flights being cancelled and my paying for hotel by myself for two nights before they arrived.   Otherwise it wouldn’t have been a bad deal at all, what with the flight bought with miles, and bunking with friends attending a conference.   Actually, it still wasn’t a bad deal – it was a marvelous vacation.

Anyway, this weekend, in honor of the Martin Luther King Day of Service, I joined about 40 other volunteers at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, which I had never been to, despite having lived 20 years in DC!   Kenilworth is known for its lotus plants and water lilies, but most of this National Park is actually a natural tidal marsh.  Something that I just found out while volunteering.    It also has a population of beavers, which I have never seen in the wild, so after our volunteering was done in the form of planting tulips and hyacinths and ripping up invasive species, I took a quick walk for a couple of miles through the trails in search of their lodge.  I could have sworn the directions the ranger gave me made it sound easy, but I didn’t see a lodge or a beaver.  I did see signs of a beaver-demolished tree.  But it looks like I’ll have to come back to KAQ in the spring, in order to see the little aquatic rodents in action.

Lotus ponds at Kenilworth

Tidal marsh at Kenilworth

That’s it for this week.  I haven’t a clue yet what I’m going to do next week.  Something warmer, hopefully.