Celebrating the Fourth

I had a pretty decent Fourth of July holiday weekend, and it's too bad that the weekend is already over. On Friday, the weather was remarkably cool for July in DC. Most of the day, the temperature was in the high seventies, and the thermometer peaked at a mere eighty degrees. I took advantage of the lovely day to go for a long bike ride on the western edge of Loudon County. I biked a forty-two mile route from Purcellville to Middleburg, up Snickersville Pike to Bluemont, and then back to the start. This part of Loudon is far from the DC sprawl, and consists of farms, horse farms, and old country estates, and makes for beautiful environment for cycling.

On Saturday, I decided to go on another long bike ride, and biked from Arlington out to Herndon on the W&OD Trail. Arlington, of course, is the essence of the DC sprawl. However, once past Vienna, the area around the W&OD Trail is a lot less developed, and much more fun to ride on. In the afternoon, I joined some of my neighbors for a BBQ, and in the evening, watched the fireworks from the roof of a friend's coop complex in southwest DC.