An “Ausflug” is a German word meaning to fly out or away for brief time. For us, an Ausflug is a weekend trip on which we see the country around our home and take as many Volksmarch walks as we can. Sometimes these trips are planned, and sometimes they just happen. Trips that are planned are nice since they are somewhat like firewood that warms you when you cut it, when you saw it, and when you burn it. A planned Ausflug gives you pleasure when you do the planning and make reservations, when you actually visit and take the walks, and when you write the story and make a scrapbook with the pictures.
An unplanned Ausflug is more like Topsy—it just grows. The difference between planned and unplanned Ausflugs is somewhat similar to the old saying that “Some people achieve greatness, and other people have greatness thrust upon them”, but not much. In any event, our plans for the weekend were:
We had planned this Ausflug to start Saturday morning and be a 3-day swing out to Sky Meadows for a group walk of the Volksmarch that skirts the Appalachian trail, then up to Gettysburg to try out the three new walks there, and finally over to Pasadena, Maryland to do another group walk before returning home. It was a great plan, but as Bobbie Burns put it, “The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft aglay.”
The reality of the weekend was quite different. Our plans went awry when a vicious ice storm covered our area with ½ inch of glaze ice on Thursday. Monika came home from work to find the roadways starting to be icy and our driveway so icy that her Buick slid backwards after she put on the parking brake. She called me, saying that the driveway was “a little slippery” and suggesting I come home soon and call Laurie to cancel our voice lesson. I found out it was a lot slippery! When I stepped out of the car my legs flew out from underneath me and flopped back flat on my back. My head snapped back and hit the driveway as my briefcase went flying off to the side. Then the car and I slid down the driveway. The car fetched up in the bushes and I fetched up beside the car, which was much better than the car sliding on top of me. Luckily, I did not have a concussion and didn’t hurt my back. In the immortal words of James Bond, I was “shaken but not stirred”. I came in looking green around the gills, developing a goose egg on the top of my head, and muttering about whether Monika was trying to kill me. But we were happy we didn’t have to drive to our voice lessons and could just stay home.
Friday - The power went out during the night and we woke up to darkness. This was Monika’s day off, so we hoped it was only temporary and went back to sleep. When dawn came, we still didn’t have electricity but could see well enough to light candles and oil lamps. After breakfast, we listened to my little Sony walkman TV and found out that the whole area was blanketed by the severe ice storm and about 400,000 people were without power. Trees had fallen onto the beltway closing a couple of lanes. Just as I was remarking on falling trees, we heard this ominous cracking sound and then a swoosh and a big bang. We went to the backdoor of the garage and found it blocked by ice covered branches. We then went out the front door and carefully walked on the ice-covered grass around to the back yard. After fighting our way thru the tangle of limbs, we saw that a branch as big as a small tree had come down. One fork of it had brushed the garage roof breaking some shingles and twisting the rain gutter. The other fork had landed a glancing blow on the beautiful newly-recovered shed, bending the roof but thankfully not caving it in. The main trunk was in the backyard and had thankfully missed a direct hit on either the garage or the shed, because it would have damaged the roof on either one. Nothing was to be done at this point, so we went back in, called our insurance agent to notify him, and read the newspaper and listened to the TV reports.
It soon became clear that we couldn’t count on getting our power back on anytime soon. Since our stove is electric, there was no way to cook dinner so we had to call Dave and Barbara to call off dinner. We decided to go out to lunch since at least the streets had become passable. I had some new tires put on the Stanza, while we shopped and had lunch at Costco, but we finally had to came back to a slowly but inexorably cooling house.
It was time to take stock and re-evaluate our plans. Leaving for Gettysburg was clearly out of the question as they had been hit hard by the same storm, and the streets and walking trails up there were covered snow and ice. Driving into the mountains to walk at Sky Meadows was similarly ill-advised as conditions on the mountain trails would be really treacherous and I was leery of hitting my head again. So we reluctantly cancelled our reservations in Gettysburg.
The house was gradually getting colder and colder as the afternoon wore on, and we faced the prospect of spending a cold, hungry, and all together rather cheerless evening at the house. But the weather map on our 2-inch TV seemed to show that the ice storm did not extend more than 60 miles South of Washington. So Richmond, in particular, would be well out of it, and the streets were clearing quickly enough that by mid-afternoon we could get out of our subdivision. Furthermore, we knew Richmond had 3 Volksmarches that we had never taken, and it was a State Capital—we are trying to do Volksmarches in all 50 states and 51 capitals. We decided that if we were going to go to a hotel anyway, we might as well go to a hotel in Richmond and do some Volksmarches the next day, and that’s how our fourth Ausflug began.
After calling to make reservations at a Richmond hotel, we threw some clothes, snacks, and the hiking belts into the Buick and started off. Monika drove all the way--my head was still feeling bruised and tender—and we arrived just as dusk was falling. We unpacked and drove to the Legends micro-brewery to get out map and directions for the walk the next morning before having dinner at a nearby Shoney’s restaurant. Being warm and well-fed, we were as happy as cows in clover.
We were up early for the complementary breakfast and then trundled off to Legends to start our walk around 9:00 a.m. Since the pub didn’t open until 11:30, the parking lot was empty except for one other car and a white-haired gent. He recognized us as Volksmarchers as we put on our hiking belts, and we struck up a conversation. It turned out that he was the designer of the trail we were walking that morning and was going to walk it with another club officer to show her the route, but she hadn’t arrived yet. We started off on the route and left him waiting for his walking companion.
The route was quite interesting—much more varied than most walks. Legends is in a very plain industrial district, and I was very unsure when we began what type of scenery the walk would afford—it turned out to be quite nice. After one block of the industrial district, we descended to the James River, which is a string of small rapids as it passes through Richmond. We curved downstream, walking on top of a flood-control wall on the riverside which gave us enough elevation to get good views of the river, bridges across the river and the downtown skyscrapers across the way. Descending from the flood wall, we passed a plant and railroad yard and then crossed over the river on the old Mayo bridge.
Entering downtown, we worked our way up the riverbank on the opposite side to the Museum of the Confederacy and paused to find a propeller shaft of the Merrimac (C.S.S. Virginia) which was our next checkpoint. We curved back down downhill to a riverbank park that Richmond is still constructing, and then crossed pedestrian bridge to the island in the center of the James River. The pedestrian bridge was quite interesting as it was the longest one I have seen and was suspended beneath one of the road bridges crossing the river. Although the suspension cables are thick steel bars, it looks so delicate from a distance that you can hardly see it.
The island itself was one of those places that gives you a distinct feeling of walking upon layers of history. Up until the last couple of hundred years, American Indian tribes had used the island as a summer fishing camp and left their artifacts. During the Civil War, it was a prisoner of war camp for captured Union soldiers, and that was a tragic tale. Apparently the strategy was to keep the prisoners weak and unhealthy so that they could not revolt and would be in no shape to fight again even if released. This policy resulted in thousands of deaths from malnutrition, disease, and simple exposure to the elements. The first-hand accounts of this treatment and the unmarked graves in the cemetery on the island were heart-breaking.
After the Civil War, the island became an iron and steel mill, and then finally a hydroelectric generating station for Richmond’s electric trolleys. But the hydroelectric dam was breached by Hurricane Camille in the 1960s, and they didn’t repair it probably because the trolleys were already fading into history. In any case, the island was a nice interlude of park and natural surface walking in this city walk.
From the park we returned across the pedestrian bridge and curled back up the hill to re-cross the James River on a different bridge. On this bridge the pedestrian path was right on top in the middle of the road, and when we set out it was really windy. I think the wind was funneling between two skyscrapers set on either side of the roadway, giving a venturi effect and greatly increasing the wind speed, because as soon as we were in the middle of the bridge the wind died away almost completely. The trail dropped down a steep set of stairs on the other side of the bridge, and we again walked the one block through the industrial district to Legends.
We decided to eat there and ordered while stamping our books. The ambiance was nice, the service was good and the food was excellent, so all in all it was a great meal. I had the chicken salad, but Monika had the Plowman’s special which included a little fresh-baked loaf of home-baked marble rye, chutney, German sausages, and cheeses. Monika had a wonderful Porter with her meal, and there was, as you might expect a wide variety of special brews. If you get to Legends, you might try some of their specialty dishes, or possibly some of the odd brews.
Rested and refreshed, we headed off to the Historical Society building to start our second Volksmarch of the day. The afternoon Volksmarch went started thru an older residential section of Richmond and then passed through a park with two very pretty lakes, one with a fountain. The walk continued on to an adjacent park which was the house and grounds of an extensive estate of a late 1800s railroad tycoon that had been donated to the city of Richmond for a public part.
This part of the walk had many interesting things to see and do. First we passed by a carriage house with several old carriages and a big-wheel bicycle displayed in it. The signs explaining what each carriage was used for were particularly good. I was surprised, for instance, that 12 persons typically rode on one type of carriage used on the estate. For that carriage the servants rode inside while the gentlefolk rode outside perched on the roof and back—it was hard to believe.
We stopped at the gift store to warm up, which had many nice things and an entire room devoted to fine china. There we found out that the mansion was open to the public and the tours left every half hour. Although this was not included in the Volksmarch, we decided to pay the “donation” and take the tour.
The mansion turned out to be a wonderful early 1900 mansion that typified the life style of the upper class during the Gilded Age. was open to the public. Almost all of the furnishings were original to the owners and the mansion had been beautifully and authentically restored. Many beautiful pieces were displayed in almost a willy-nilly fashion, which seems very “busy” to our modern sensibilities but was probably quite natural for them. The high point was the swan bed on the second floor, which was really a piece of woodworking art. This was the bed of the lady of the house, who apparently had a thing about swans. The entire bed is of a stylized swan, with the head and beak curving down gracefully at the foot of the bed. It is impossible to describe this bed accurately with just words, but if you get a chance you might want to go on the tour and take a peek yourself.
After the mansion tour, we zig-zagged back and forth thru formal gardens and fountains. At the foot of the hill below the mansion, we found a Japanese garden with very nice reflecting pools and stepping stones. Children were apparently play hide-and-seek in a grove of bamboo growing next to these lakes, and the sound of their laughter coupled with the beauty of the setting made for an enchanting moment.
In general, there were a lot of children in the park, and we found out why as we followed the trail to the other side. First we went thru a mini-zoo area with displayed animals such as foxes and birds such as hawks. Then we went up the hill and found ourselves in a petting zoo with the usual cast of small, cuddly animals plus some unusual ones like a peacock. I saw a peahen sitting on the park bench and looking calmly at me, and I kept trying to figure out just what the dog-gone thing was—I finally figured it out when I saw the peacock and put two and two together. One surprising thing I found out is that the typical raptor eats as much meat per year as the typical black bear, which I can only account by the tremendous differences in metabolic rates in the two species.
The mansion tour and petting zoo were lots of fun, but we were getting tired and could feel ourselves flagging as we looped around to get back to our starting point. In particular, going up a long hill past the old pump house and up to see a tower-type monument in a pretty little park, was a long slog. It is harder to really appreciate things appropriately when fatigued. We returned thru the residential district around the museum and drove off to Arby’s for dinner, after which we spent the evening watching TV and not moving around very much.
The next morning we did the final Richmond Volksmarch. This one also started from the historical society building, but proceeded on a different route through the residential district to the downtown area. On the way downtown, we passed this beautiful set of white buildings situated on a bluff overlooking the James River. We speculated on whether it was an old mental hospital, resort complex, or what all, but finally found a sign that indicated this was the headquarters of Ethyl Corporation.
In downtown Richmond, this trail overlapped our fist walk in Richmond by about ½ mile as it went past the same park-in-construction beside the James River. The track thru downtown was otherwise quite different, winding around the new part of the business district. We especially enjoyed the art exhibit and aroma of fresh baking and freshly brewed coffee as we pass thru a hotel lobby. The high point of the walk, both figuratively and literally, was the State Capitol building where we found our checkpoint, a monument with statues of famous Virginians. From there, we returned to our starting point straight as an arrow down an avenue that had a set of monuments of Civil War confederate heroes, starting with JEB Stuart and ending with Stonewall Jackson. They do take the Civil War seriously in Richmond, so it is a great place for Civil War buffs. We saw some really nice old houses along this avenue, but we both felt this was otherwise just a typical town walk.
We finished early enough to return by about 1:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon to a warm house and a good football game. We found out later that the electricity had not come back on until Saturday afternoon, so it was just as well we were in Richmond. Altho it definitely was not what we had planned, we had a nice weekend after all.
Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt