Walk 7: Lock 10 and The Feds

There are a lot of ways to know that it is not going to be a good day and opening the front door only to find an FBI agent waiting for you is just one. Or for that matter, a U.S. Marshal or anyone from the IRS.

The fully restored lock house at Lock 10 on the Canal.

As Sarah and I parked at Lock 10 on the C&O Canal, I explained this to Loki. I felt I had to do something since he was going to have to be leashed for our entire walk this morning. While it is true that Montgomery County has a leash law that covers the entire county, this issue is honored in the breach more often than not. However, I have heard too many stories of National Park Rangers handing out $50 tickets to dog owners to risk letting Loki run free along the canal.

I told him that unless he was on a leash, the Park Rangers would "git him" and they'd probably use a long pole with a loop on the end. He'd be dragged off and tossed in the back of a truck with a lot of other vaguely criminal dogs and spend the night in the "pen." Loki didn't understand a word of it, of course, and just cocked his head like he does whenever I tell him a bunch of nonsense.

The Feds are gonna git ya, Loki! (yes, by the way, Loki has one blue and one brown eye which shows up nicely here)

Just to be confusing, Lock 10 is located roughly at milepost 9 on the canal, and on this walk, since it is a flat, easy path, we headed to milepost 7. I hoped the length of the walk would make up somewhat for the confining nature of the leash.

On this stretch of the towpath, there aren't really any good alternative trails since the canal is quite close to the river. As always, there are deer trails through the woods by the canal, but no improved trails. However, this two mile stretch of towpath does have three lock house where back in the day, lock keepers used to live.

The arrangement back when the canal was a 185 mile link to Cumberland, Maryland, was that a lock keeper had use of the house and small plot of level cleared land for a garden in addition to a modest salary. In exchange, canal boaters expected him to be on call 24 hours a day all year long to open and shut the lock gates. However, since the locks are fairly easy to use, I could well imagine a lock keeper leaning out a window and shouting down, "Just do it yourself! I'm busy!"

The Lock 8 lock house.

The Park Service does allow people to stay overnight in some of the lock houses that have been restored which sounds like an interesting idea.I would have brought it up with Loki but he would have just cocked his head to the side waiting for words he recognized like "walk," "biscuit," or "cat." I tell him "cat" when our three overweight cats have, in my opinion, been lounging around too much and Loki sets off to herd them in any direction except the one the cat wants to go in. This usually brings Sarah into the picture who tells Loki to leave the cats alone. We both slink off at that point grinning. Herding cats is just too much fun to pass up.

The third lock house on the walk.

We did take one of several detours to the banks of the Potomac and with all the rain we've been having, the river is running high and fast. 

The Potomac starts to flood some of the lower lying islands in the channels.

The interesting thing about the Potomac is you can tell if it is flooding with one glance. When the river turns brown from it's usual slate-gray color, it's in flood. The recent day-after-day rains we've have have washed a lot of silt into it.

Of course, floods don't really affect the canal unless they are so big the Potomac rises high enough to engulf the canal which does happen every so often. On the other hand, idle water in a warm place makes a great place for algae.

The green waters of the canal.

So on one side, we had the fast flowing, brown Potomac and on the other, the stagnate green waters of the canal.

Duck in the mud again. Not all of the canal is green. Where the locks are no longer functioning, the bottom is just marsh mud.


Overall, this is nice two mile walk one way, but the lower end of between mile posts 8 and 7 can't really be called a nature walk. When the engineers put in the Clara Barton Parkway, they snugged up against the canal along this stretch and as a result, there is a fair amount of traffic noise. But, like all the canal walks in Spring time, it is still scenic.

Practical information. Heading towards DC on the Clara Barton Parkway, pass the Carderock exit and park at parking lot on Lock 10. This is very close to mile post 9. Walk to mile post 7 and return. One way, the walk is 2 miles. The trail is crushed gravel and flat. As everywhere on the towpath, National Park Rangers enforce the leash law.