Beach Drive

Since we moved to Crestwood in July, 2004, on most weekend days we have walked down Mattewson Drive to Blagden Avenue, and followed that to Beach Drive. From that point we have gone running, sometimes together, usually separately. That won't work for the next several months.

At the end of August, the contractors finished repaving Beach Drive from Tilden Street down to Cathedral Avenue. The National Park Service then blocked off the next stretch of Beach Drive, from Tilden up to Joyce Road. The barriers, as I encountered them that Wednesday, were nothing one could not step over or around. On September 3, the barriers had been pushed aside, and Beach Drive above Broad Branch was full of runners, walkers, and bicyclists.

Last Saturday, we walked down Blagden as usual, but found a construction site at the bottom. There were workers with jackhammers taking up pavement, and there was a policeman, polite but very definite that we might not pass through. We walked back uphill to Argyle Terrace, after which my wife ran around the neighborhood, and I ran up to get into the park near Carter Barron.

Now Carter Barron, the next obvious access point north, is a good route into the park. The difficulty arises with access from the south. The nearest way is along Piney Branch Parkway. The right side looking downhill  is mostly all right, in having a place to run out of the roadway. However, it has about twenty yards where a chain link fence comes right to the curb, and there one must run in the gutter while cars go by at what seems high speed. On the other side of the road the ground is less satisfactory, and there is an equal or greater stretch of chain link. After that, one ends up at Klingle Road, which is farther down the park than I'd prefer to get in, or, on a route that started upstream, out.

The neighborhood in general is unhappy, though more about vehicle access, or so I judge from the email traffic To cross the park one must go north to Military Road or south to Park Road. In the best case this adds ten or fifteen minutes to the time needed to drive to Chevy Chase or points west. A family on our block determined to sell their house this year because of the road work: the husband's commute to Tyson's Corner needed no lengthening, they thought. They now live in Chevy Chase.

I should add the bike trail replaced over the past year is very smooth, and I gather that the roadway is too. The pavement above Tilden is not smooth, but rather much patched. When running on it I aim to compromise between avoiding the worst bumps and cavities on the one hand and intruding on space the bicyclists suppose to be theirs on the other. I look forward to that work being done, if not to the detours we shall have to make around it in the meantime.