Theodore Roosevelt Island

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The Mount Vernon Trail is one of the best places to go for those who enjoy being active outdoors but doesn’t want to deal with the crowds in Washington DC. The 17 miles trail spans from Rosslyn, VA to President George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon but along the way provides some of the best views of the nation’s capital and then some. The trail itself is protected by the National Park Service and can be accessed year-round from 6 am- 10 pm.

Here’s a great map of the trail.

For a majority of the time, the trail is sandwiched between the Potomac River and the George Washington Parkway.  This makes it really easy to hop on and off the trail at any given point. But it also provides some very beautiful waterfront views.  In other words, you don’t have to walk the entire 17 miles in order to see the best of the best, here are some personal favorite points of interests and places where you can hop on and off the trail:

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The Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Arlington Memorial Bridge are seen from the Mount Vernon Trail in the middle of autumn.

Theodore Roosevelt Island

(L) the footbridge leading to Theodore Roosevelt Island (R) Theodore Roosevelt statue

Let’s start with one of my favorite places along the Mount Vernon Trail, Theodore Roosevelt Island. A great place to begin your outdoor adventure. I love it because it’s not like any other place along the trail. Park your car in the parking lot and cross the footbridge. You’ll be greeted by Theodore Roosevelt himself. Walk within the island for a bit more solitude than you would get along the Mount Vernon Trail. No bikes are allowed on the island but there’s a bike rack by the bridge so you can leave your bike and walk 🙂

Once you are back on the Mount Vernon Trail, you will see beautiful willow trees, and about half a mile away from Roosevelt island, you’ll start seeing some of the best views of the Washington DC Memorials. Its one of the only places where you can actually see the top 3 landmarks (Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and the US Capitol) all lined up in a row. There is not one spot, in particular, you should go to see them. The more you walk, the more the perspectives will change and the view from across the Potomac River is like no other. If you walk a little further, you’ll start seeing the Thomas Jefferson Memorial as well. Enjoy these views or the memorials anywhere from Roosevelt Island to the Navy Merchant Marine Memorial.

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July 4th firework celebration

If you can, my favorite time to go here is on July 4th for the firework show. You basically get front row seats all along this part of the trail so you don’t really have to go early to claim your spot. If you do decide to go, then driving/parking may be a hassle. The best way to do it is to take the metro and get on and off at the Rosslyn stop. It’s a little more than half a mile walk but you’ll be saving so much more time by using the public transportation route. I have been on the George Washington Parkway when there are fireworks and cars will literally stop in the middle of the road to watch it. At that point, traffic gets super backed up!

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Like I said in my last post, I have never actually crossed the Roosevelt Island bridge. Crazy, right? I’ve always just parked in the parking lot and headed straight to the trail just to capture images of the monuments. I had no idea what I was missing out on. So if you’re like me and haven’t explored this great place, it’s this open area with what look like great pieces of art and architecture around. It doesn’t seem very big and it was a little difficult to imagine what the water features looked like while they were covered in snow but I’m sure they could be really cool to capture in warmer climate. Already getting ideas for reflection images!

But it was the sculpture of President Roosevelt that really captured my attention. He’s right in the center when you arrive at the island so I tried to find different ways to photograph it. I really liked how he was covered in the snow (almost that white on white that I was looking for) but still looked like he was waving “hello”. LOL. After circling it a little bit, I found that I really liked the look of putting him a little further back but having a blurred out foreground element to make it look a little more interesting and to give that depth. I remember trying to stoop down a little so that the curvature of the bush matched the implied curvature of his body matched. So I would say that this was a successful first trip out to Roosevelt Island!

Even with all these great snow opportunities, I still can’t enough. Here’s to hoping we get a little bit more snow this season. Fingers crossed!

My camera settings for this image is F11 at 1/160 sec at ISO 200 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm.