And this is what Shenandoah Acres looks like now…
September 21, 2012, 9:01 PM
So while I was out and about today, I got new photos of Shenandoah Acres as a follow-up to my previous Journal entry on Shenandoah Acres. And if you ask me, it was kind of depressing. Take a look:
One of two platforms in the lake, and the 1997 beach house. To give you an idea of the normal lake level, the platform was less than a foot above the water level, and the platform was completely surrounded by water.
Continue reading…Categories: Shenandoah Acres, Stuarts Draft
A train ride with far more excitement than you might expect…
September 19, 2012, 9:21 PM
This is also why, when I’m traveling on a public mode of transportation, the idea is to leave early so that I can be at the boarding location in plenty of time, just in case anything goes wrong in the process. Today was one of those days where something went wrong. I described it as a “clusterf—“, and I think that was putting it nicely.
First of all, though, to set things up: I’m in Stuarts Draft right now, and I went there on Amtrak’s westbound Cardinal. To get there, my plan was to take the 51 from my house to Glenmont, and then take the Red Line to Union Station. Initially, things went well. I caught the same 51 that I usually get to go to work, and caught my Red Line train.
And then things went downhill from there.
The Red Line was having a power problem on Track 2 at Brentwood Yard. Thus they had to single track through the yard, during morning rush hour. Whenever you hear “single tracking” and “rush hour” in the same sentence, by the way, that’s never a good sign. So at Glenmont, we sat for several minutes before we started the run – much longer than usual. Then we proceeded to Wheaton and held again. No hold at Forest Glen. Then we held for about ten minutes each at Silver Spring and Takoma.
And then things got worse. There was a second power problem on the Red Line at Van Ness-UDC, with single tracking over there, too. Lovely. By this point, Metro was telling people in the e-alerts to consider taking the Green Line. That’s when you know it’s bad. With two areas of single tracking, I bailed at Fort Totten and took the Green Line.
What to do with Shenandoah Acres?
September 2, 2012, 8:39 PM
For the last few years, I have been involved in a Facebook group called “Remembering Shenandoah Acres“. This group is built around discussing memories of times spent at the Shenandoah Acres resort in Stuarts Draft that closed after the 2004 season, but most discussions anymore center around complaining about the state that the property is now in.
For those not familiar, Shenandoah Acres was a facility that billed itself as “America’s Finest Inland Beach”, owned and operated by the Blacka family for many years. It had a campground, there were cabins, and a motel building on the property. The facility also had tennis courts, trail rides on horseback, and miniature golf. However, the centerpiece of the facility was a manmade lake with a beach around it, playground equipment in the water (including one slide about two or three stories high), and a large tower in the center that offered a zip line ride. The facility was a popular tourist attraction, and the lake was also very popular with locals during the summer season.
In the years that I’ve been familiar with the facility, one of the merry go rounds in the water was replaced in 1995 by “Clyde the Slyde”, which was a small slide built inside a dinosaur sculpture, and the zip lines were dismantled in the late 1990s or early 2000s and replaced with the “Pink Zipper” water slide. Additionally, the roof of the original beach house collapsed due to excessive snowfall in 1997, and was replaced with a new structure slightly to the northeast of the original. The facility closed after the 2004 season because, according to the owner at the time, whom my family went to church with, the cost of insurance finally became too much to bear. My family went to Shenandoah Acres from 1993 until about 1996.
Categories: Shenandoah Acres, Stuarts Draft
And the fruit is photographed…
August 5, 2012, 9:00 PM
At last, it is done. I went down to Eastern Market earlier today and did something that I said I’d wanted to do for a while: photograph food. I visited most of the food vendors over there and photographed the fresh fruits and vegetables that were out for sale. I photographed so many different kinds of tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms that it’s not even funny. I certainly got a lesson in foods, though. I didn’t realize that tomatoes came in so many different colors. First, there’s this one, which looks pretty conventional, at least to my grocery store shopping eyes:
Categories: Photography, Washington DC, Weather
Renovations at Union Station!
July 25, 2012, 2:16 PM
This is my traditional posted-from-Club-Acela-at-Union-Station Journal entry, because I’m going to be on a train to Chicago with my mother within the hour. Should be fun. However, at Union Station, I was surprised to see a lot of netting and scaffolding in the Main Hall. Last time I was at Union Station, which was in October for the anti-Walmart demonstration, this wasn’t there. From what I can find, this scaffolding and netting is for ceiling repairs necessitated by damage from the earthquake that happened last August.
In any event, it’s pretty neat looking, seeing all of this extra hardware in what is otherwise a very clean looking Main Hall:
Lights under the scaffolding around the statues on the west side of the Main Hall.
Categories: Amtrak, Washington DC
Schumin Web after dark…
July 8, 2012, 7:38 PM
And apparently my life after dark, at least last night, was a bar, two buses, and four Green Line trains. So cue up the “Fireside” music, because here it is. I went into DC in order to hang out with Christina, a friend and former coworker, one more time before she moves to Hawaii. I’m quite happy for her, because she’s wanted to move to Hawaii for a long time. However, I’ll miss her in DC. That’s why this evening was special.
Getting there, though, was a little more exciting than I expected. The bar where we were going to was The Passenger, across 7th Street NW from the convention center. I considered this to be a good opportunity to go see some of the new Rush+ signage that Metro had put up, that would include new station names and slightly different train movements. I had originally decided to go in on the Green Line to avoid a shutdown on my neck of the Red Line, but after a heat kink fouled the Green Line on Friday evening, the planned shutdown on the Red Line was cancelled and it moved to the Green Line instead. I didn’t realize that there was a shutdown on the Green Line until I got to Greenbelt station, but decided to just roll with it rather than get back in the car. It’s okay, you see. I did, however, spot an amusing license plate on the way in at Greenbelt station:
“CIAO BB”, a play on “Ciao, baby!”
Categories: Friends, Washington DC, WMATA
Montgomery County is definitely not itself right now…
June 30, 2012, 5:06 PM
And that’s putting it lightly. A very big storm blew through the DC area on Friday night, and the results were not pretty. As I understand it, the weather event was called a derecho, and the effects of such a phenomenon were painfully obvious for those of us in Montgomery County. Remember back in 2010, when that big storm came up out of nowhere and left much of Montgomery County without power? It seems that history has repeated itself. This storm blew through, and took out trees all over the place, and with that came power lines, and that left Montgomery County in the dark. According to WUSA, out of 305,000 Pepco customers in Montgomery County, 210,000 of them currently don’t have electricity, and out of 800 traffic lights in the county, 500 of them don’t work on account of power outages. And unfortunately, I am part of the two-thirds of Montgomery County that doesn’t have power. I lost power on Friday night. The lights went on and off a few times, and then went out for good. And they’re still out.
And with so much of the county in the dark, people’s patterns changed. First of all, getting around is a real pain. With five out of eight traffic lights down (and no rhyme or reason about which lights are dead), we have been told all over to treat dark traffic signals like four-way stops, which slows things down. From what I can tell, there are four ways that intersections with traffic lights are treated in these sorts of situations. First are the lights that work. Those function as they always do. Then there are the really big intersections, which have police officers directing traffic through them. Then the bigger intersections but that aren’t as big as the others get these little portable stop signs between the lanes to remind drivers that they are supposed to treat the intersection as a four-way stop. And then finally, most intersections with dark lights are just left dark without any signage or personnel on scene, and drivers are expected to be courteous to each other and stop before proceeding.
Categories: Silver Spring, Washington DC, Weather, Wheaton
Day tripping it to Stuarts Draft…
May 29, 2012, 8:46 PM
I certainly had fun on Monday! I went with Isis and Cubby to Stuarts Draft and surrounding areas. First I picked them up, and then we headed down to Augusta County, Virginia.
Our first stop was the old DeJarnette Center in Staunton. For those not familiar, DeJarnette Center was constructed in 1932 as a privately funded mental institution named for Dr. Joseph DeJarnette. The facility became a state-operated children’s mental institution in 1975, and was abandoned in 1996 when the DeJarnette Center moved to a new facility across Route 250 from the original. The facility was renamed the “Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents” in 2001 due to Joseph DeJarnette’s strong support of eugenics. The facility was boarded up in 2009.
On our visit, we stopped the car nearby, and then took a walk around the outside of the building. We didn’t go inside for a few reasons. First, due to the board-up, there was no light inside. Second, asbestos. And lastly, snakes. I’m told that the building is infested with snakes on all levels of the building. And snakes creep me out. Speaking of snakes, while walking around the grounds, we found a snake, laying on the ground partly in our path as we walked behind the building. It was a long black snake. It wasn’t interested in us, but still, snakes creep me out, especially so when Cubby indicated that it could either be a black king snake (not poisonous), or a cottonmouth (very poisonous). In any case, I didn’t really want to find out for sure which one it was.
Categories: Afton Mountain, Blue Ridge Parkway, Charlottesville, Friends, Recreation/Exercise, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Urban exploration, Waynesboro
So the Baltimore Inner Harbor was fun…
May 27, 2012, 10:44 PM
I went up to Baltimore with a friend on Friday evening, where we explored the Inner Harbor for a while. That was kind of fun. The Inner Harbor is a very fun area, though it seems a bit overcommercialized. But such is what happens, I suppose. I loved the smell of the sea air, everyone was having so much fun out and about, and there were all kinds of fun ships sailing around.
The first ship we saw was The Black-Eyed Susan, a paddlewheeler:
Categories: Baltimore, Friends, Power Rangers
Safeway photo set update for you…
November 7, 2011, 11:17 PM
Remember my “Abandoned Grocery Store” photo set, where I took photos of the board-up on the Safeway store in Wheaton, Maryland? They’re finally tearing the building down. Let the record show that I did the photo set on December 27, 2009. The store had closed eight days prior to this. They’re just now getting around to demolishing the building – nearly two years later. Admittedly, it didn’t look quite as rough as it looked in my photo set the whole time. The board-up was painted gray by spring 2010, and then a “Coming soon your new SAFEWAY” banner was hung from the front of it for a year and a half. It looked like this:
Of course, that banner was none too reassuring, because the closed store was still there, and the new building replacing it couldn’t go up until this one was gone.
Braaaaaaaaaaains…
October 26, 2011, 12:24 AM
First of all, I can’t believe that Halloween is almost upon us again! Feels like just yesterday that it was Labor Day, no?
In the spirit of Halloween, I got together with some friends last Saturday night, and attended the fourth annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk in downtown Silver Spring. For those who don’t know, a zombie walk is an event where people dress up like the undead as commonly portrayed in works of fiction, and then walk through an area as a group, in character. In addition to people dressed as zombies, you also have people dressed as “zombie hunters”, who dress up like commandos and carry Nerf weapons and other similar faux-artillery.
In Silver Spring, my friends went dressed as zombies. I went straight and had my camera out. My goal was to get some photos and have a good time. I’d dare say that both goals were accomplished. The zombie walk gathered at approximately the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Sligo Avenue outside Jackie’s, just north of the point where the Red Line crosses Georgia Avenue (you know, that bright pink bridge). Once we got going, we walked north on Georgia Avenue as far as Ellsworth Drive. Then we made a right turn, walked east on Ellsworth Drive through the “Downtown” development, made a left turn, walked north on Fenton Street for two blocks, and then turned left and walked west on Colesville Road to the AFI Silver theater. There, the theater was showing two horror movies, and was the formal end of the zombie walk. We didn’t go to the movies, and instead continued on to Georgia Avenue, and then went back to the “Downtown” development on Ellsworth Drive, where we got to hang out for a while. Not bad!
Categories: Events, Friends, Halloween, Silver Spring
My first Breda ride…
October 11, 2011, 10:22 PM
So I was scanning again on Sunday, since I brought all the old photos up from Stuarts Draft a few weeks ago. Among other things, I scanned in the photos from our family’s first trip to Washington DC, which we did with friends of ours visiting from out of town, on June 21, 1994. The night before, all of us had stayed with another friend in Tracys Landing, Maryland, and then drove over to Pentagon City Mall, where we caught the Metro at Pentagon City. We rode into DC from there to McPherson Square. That first ride was on a Rohr (1000-Series) car, since I specifically remember the red door release covers from that ride.
Getting off the Metro, we toured the White House, went to the Natural History museum, and then saw the Air and Space Museum. Not too bad. We were definitely all tourists on that trip, and so we did the tourist thing.
Then on the way back, we took Metro from Smithsonian back to Pentagon City. As chance would have it, either Mom or Dad took a picture of me on the return trip home. And much to my surprise, in looking at the photo this weekend, it turns out that the return trip was on a Breda:
Categories: Washington DC, WMATA
My trip to Stuarts Draft… via Amtrak!
September 27, 2011, 10:41 PM
So this is actually a Video Journal entry. And here it is:
Categories: Amtrak, Cell phone, Family, Staunton, Stuarts Draft, Video Journal, Waynesboro, WMATA
And at last, we finish Chicago…
August 30, 2011, 10:16 PM
Just in case you thought I forgot to finish my description of Chicago, let me disabuse you of that idea. Here’s the last installment of the trip to Chicago.
First thing Sunday, Mom and I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant with Sis and Chris. To save money, since my main complaint about the trip in 2010 was that we spent too much on food, we bought food for breakfast, and had something reasonably healthy for breakfast that we bought at a nearby grocery store. I had oatmeal and some fruit. Yes, I did my darndest to be good on this trip, despite it all. But this being the last day, we splurged a little, and ate in the restaurant.
Then we went down to Rogers Park. Sis and Chris promised us a farmers’ market, and so we saw the farmers’ market in Rogers Park. It was initially raining, but we managed. Since I couldn’t buy anything on account of the train trip that Mom and I would be taking later in the day, I decided to have a little camera fun, photographing the fruits and vegetables for sale. And unlike the CTA workers, who think that when they harass photographers, they are doing it in the name of national security (puh-leeze), the folks at the farmers’ market were more than happy to show off their wares for the camera. And here are some of the results:
“I feel braver when I’m holding a weapon!”
August 19, 2011, 10:37 PM
And now, back to Chicago following that little detour into complaining about pain. After all, I’ve only told you about half the trip!
On Saturday, we headed into the greater Chicagoland area – much further out than our hotel in Evanston. We actually went out to Lisle, Illinois, which is home to the Morton Arboretum. We went to the Morton Arboretum to participate in a Theatre Hike, where we see a play as we walk all around the arboretum. We saw a classic – The Wizard of Oz. Chris, my brother-in-law, was playing the Cowardly Lion. The whole day was a lot of fun from the moment that Sis and Chris picked us up at the hotel in their 1997 Saab.
First of all, Mom and I had never done much exploring outside the city, and so we were seeing the scenery, as we went through Skokie and a couple of other towns. We were also amazed to see how many companies had large corporate campuses in the greater Chicagoland area. It was something, all right. Plus we got to see Sis and Chris interact as they figured out where Morton Arboretum was and how exactly to plug it into their GPS. As it turned out, they had to Google it on Sis’s phone since the address they had didn’t work on the GPS, and so they navigated off the phone. Whatever works, I suppose.