Pounding the Pavement (With Your Boots On)

Rock Creek Cemetery Rock Creek Church Road and Webster Street NW.

Endless Northwest 2 miles

We left the cemetery and headed west along Webster Street. The roads were quiet and mellow on a Saturday morning. People on their stoops said hi. A couple of guys with boxing gloves sparred in an alley. The randomness and diversity of the city were on show here: In one moment we saw the stately St. Gabriel Parish off the wide and pretty Grant Circle, and in the next we saw a beat-up car parked behind a locked chain-link fence outside someone's house. Pretty sure it had been there since about 1983.

By now the midmorning heat was getting to us, and we were thirsty. A quick stop for a drink at Flip It Bakery and Deli at Buchanan Street and Georgia Avenue revived us. But about 20 minutes later, I was regretting not getting a couple of cookies and an extra bottle of water for the trek across Rock Creek Park.

St. Gabriel Parish 26 Grant Cir. NW.

Flip It Bakery and Deli

4532 Georgia Ave. NW.

The Park 1.7 miles

Laris is a great guy to take a hike with because he knows all kinds of facts about the city, including where Chandra Levy's body was found. We apparently walked right past there as we crossed through Rock Creek Park.

We entered the park near the tennis center at Carter Barron Amphitheatre (there are bathrooms there!). We walked into the woods and quickly picked up a trail for what was definitely the most strenuous part of the hike. Up and down we went through the park, from about 100 feet above sea level to 300 feet, crossing the creek and winding our way out to the other side of the city. We didn't pass too many people, except along Beach Drive, and the trees provided a shady and quiet respite from the rest of the city. The final stretch was a steep decline along Grant Road.

Rock Creek Park Tennis Center 16th and Kennedy streets NW.

Suburbs in the City 1.3 miles

We exited the park onto Davenport Street, and there was a moment when I felt a bit like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." It seemed like we weren't in Washington anymore. Instead of blocks of rowhouses, we looked up into the trees at modern homes with walls of windows built on giant steel poles.

Our goal was to find the city's high point in Fort Reno Park, which turned out to be a long, steady climb up Davenport. The houses soon got a bit more conventional, but conventional in the McLean or Potomac sense. By the time we reached Fort Reno Park, we were muttering the hiker's motto: "There's no such thing as too much water."

Finding the exact highest point in the city required a little hunting, but we kept heading up until we found the nondescript round plaque in the ground heralding that we were a whopping 409 feet above sea level.

I gotta say, the view from there could most charitably be described as very, very lame. A couple of trees, a radio tower and a road off somewhere. Mount Everest (a mere 28,626 feet higher) this was not. But I bet Mount Everest doesn't have a Whole Foods filled with cold drinks and hot food nearby. That's where we headed, the perfect way to wrap up our trek through the ecosystem known as Washington.

Fort Reno Park

3800 Donaldson Pl. NW.