Walk 9: Gold Mines, Overlook and Urban Trail Dogs

You have your guard dogs, tracking dogs, seeing eye dogs and all the others. And every single one of them started out as a recalcitrant puppy who couldn't stand the idea of being tied to a leash.

Kai makes it clear that I can go for a walk if I want, but he's going to set his rear end down right here.

In a few months, Kai will be joining Loki on the long walks but right now, I can't get him to go down the driveway. But this is pretty much par for the course so far. After all, Kai is only about 12 weeks old. But even if he doesn't realize it, his training is already underway. He knows his name and he usually comes when he's called. Part of this probably comes from watching Loki respond to commands but it's still going to be a bit of an effort to turn him into a real urban trail dog.  

 
Imagine you're in the woods and small herd of deer bolts from the underbrush thirty feet away and heads for the next county. If your dog takes off after them, you're going to have a lot of running to do get him back. Not to mention the fact the deer are probably going to cross some busy road with your dog in hot pursuit. Not good for dog, deer, or drivers.

Kai reacts calmly to the leash by going completely berserk.

Nope, a good urban trail dog ignores EVERYTHING except you. Kai has some of the basics down. He does focus on either Sarah or I and the getting him used to the leash will just be a matter of slowly, slowly building this up until the leash is not threatening any longer. He'll probably be ready for long walks in August or September.

Loki has all this down pat. His preferred technique is to race fifty yards ahead on our walks and then wait for us to catch up. In his mind, he's setting up a tennis ball throw or a stick toss. In my mind, he's completely focused on us which keeps him from becoming focused on causing trouble.

Doing the Border Collie crouch. A typical pose for a collie who's fixated on something.

Of course, once the dog has this down, then it's possible to have some fun.

Loki fetches a stick tossed into a hollow tree.

The temperatures are soaring right now and it feels a lot more like August than it does May which meant Sarah and I abandoned the C&O Canal and headed for the cooler woods. But we still wanted to end up by the river so we choose the fat bulge of land in the C&0 Canal National Park that encompasses Great Falls. If you like, you can drive in through the main entrance and get nicked for $10 or so, but we chose to park on the side of MacArthur Boulevard at Falls Road and walked in on the Goldmine Loop Trail.

Yes, there is a real gold mine on the spot, or was. The bluffs of the Potomac Gorge here are largely white quartz  and from 1900 to 1940, miners pounded the quartz into dust to extract about 1/2 ounce of gold per ton of rock. Doesn't sound very economical and it wasn't.

Loki stakes a mining claim at water tank of the old gold mine.

A few areas of the woods are fenced off around the old mining buildings. I doubt there are any old, open shafts left since most of the area appears to be criss-crossed with collapsed mine shafts.










The old entrance to one of the shafts. The mines seem to have been collapsed but I don't whether by accident or on purpose.

We walked the goldmine loop going in and then took the overlook trail. The main difference between the two is the goldmine loop cuts directly through the woods while the overlook takes you to the edge of the bluffs so that you can get a bird's eye view of great falls.




These woods are much more open than thick jungles we have along the creek beds and parts of the forest had almost a park like feel with carpets of grass.










The overlook onto one of the channels at Great Falls.









With our meanderings and having Loki chase sticks, we probably walked 2 miles before we reached the canal and with the temperature close to 90 degrees, Loki, as always cloaked in his long fur coat,  was beginning to get pretty hot.

A quick chance to sit in the canal for about ten minutes solved that problem.

This canal water feels great! Why don't you come in for a swim with me?

Border Collies will do anything to please you including overheating themselves to the point they can really injure themselves. Loki has a lot of ways to indicate he needs some rest including pulling on the leash when he sees still waters that he can lie down in. Other signals he gives when off-leash include heading for shade or just moving more slowly than usual. The big signal is that when his tongue looks about as thick and big as a T-bone steak. Then, it's really time to rest him.

                                                                                                       One of the channels at Great Falls

From the visitor center, we headed downstream for about 1/2 mile to path that leads to Great Falls. The path has a series of bridges that cross over different channels and Loki didn't like a single one of them. Too much thundering water all around and he's not particularly fond of heights either. He kept us moving at a good clip to get past all this.

Two panoramic shots of the main channel at Great Falls.

Back up at the visitors center, the tourist boat was about to leave for a quick jaunt along the C&O Canal. This is a canal boat with seats placed on top so it is sort of authentic and sort of not. But it looks like fun. We kept Loki close by when the mules were about 10 feet away, but he just ignored them which is what he is supposed to do.

Moving stuff was what the canal was all about for about ten years before the railroads killed it off.

By this time, we'd spent about an hour in the sun and Loki needed another cool down before we climbed the bluffs again.

Sarah and Angus let Loki cool off before the climb back up the bluffs.


Practical information. The Goldmine Loop is marked by the Park Service as 3.2 miles total. We added the overlook and also went to Great Falls so the walk was probably 4.5 miles in total. Some steep up and down sections, mostly dirt trails. No rock hopping. We parked on the side of MacArthur Boulevard at the junction with Falls Road. There are no signs indicating no parking right here.