Welcome To...

Not where I was when I got lost, but this is in Maryland, so...close enough.

Ever accidentally end up in Maryland?  It happens.  Especially if you're in Alexandria, trying to get back up to Tyson's Corner and you zig when you should have zagged.  And by that I mean that I veered right instead of left and ended up at National Harbor which I'm sure would be delightfully ritzy during the day, but was not so pleasant in the middle of the night when all I wanted was to go home and go to bed.  I hate driving in the entire DC Metro Area at night (and/or in the rain), I always make wrong turns and feel like all the other drivers are trying to kill me.

A Mo' for the Met

Just a brief reminder for any who may have forgotten - New York City is not that far away.  You can take the train (under three hours on the Acela Express, about four hours on the Northeast Regional), drive (a little over four hours and probably the cheapest way to go) or fly (a little over an hour).  If you're at all like me, you'll find a way to pay the membership fee at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and come home wishing you could have stayed longer.  Don't forget to get a hot pretzel, a bagel, a slice of pizza and a cannoli.  But don't bring any of those into the museum.  And you don't have to eat them all at once.  Unless you want to. 

The National Zoo - Invertebrates!

Think of this as the teaser trailer to a future feature post about The National Zoo's Invertebrate House.

Did I mention that the Vienna Metro station is under construction?

Avoid it, if you can!

The original plan was to get to the zoo in plenty of time to have a personal tour of the inverts by a friend of mine who volunteers at The National Zoo in DC.  Unfortunately, there had been a train derailment (obviously this is unfortunate for many reasons) the day before and the Metro was not quite reliable that day.  As it turns out, neither was my camera.  So my promise to you is that there will be a post on Lost in DC in the future that will actually be worthy of the amazing Invertebrate Exhibit and the friend I mentioned will be contributing to it, so I predict that it shall not suck.  What I offer you today are the pictures that I could salvage from that day, followed by a few places you might want to check out in DC (Cleveland Park neighborhood), which are just down the street from this zoo entrance:

Here you can see that we went on a decent day (it didn't rain, but it wasn't too sunny).

When you see these, you know you're near the first set of bathrooms on your way into the zoo.

And the gift shop, it's next to the bathrooms.

The invert house is behind that building, don't let it confuse you!

Another reason I really need to go back.

And here we are!

Before we go in for the shortest tour of the invert house ever, we have one general rule: Please don't kill the exhibits.  Leftover detergent on your hands can kill an entire ecosystem and some marine life can be extremely sensitive to flash photography.  Avoid sticking your hands and/or belongings where they don't belong and turn your flash off before you enter this exhibit (or any aquarium).

The Invertebrate House is in it's 25th year, as of this May!  Once you've looked through the awesomeness below, click here to see how you can help The National Zoo celebrate this occasion (sorry, the cake-cutting ceremony was May 7th - I missed it, too).

Gorgeous teensy sea anemone.

Gorgeous not-so-teensy sea anemone (some are the size of a top hat).  See the ones that don't have any tendrils sticking out?  They're digesting.  More on that in the next post.

Cuttlefish, hiding under the rocks (bottom of this photo, slightly camouflaged).

Happy dancing crab!  Oh...nope.  Angry man crab!  That there's a Blue Crab from Chesapeake Bay.

Look at those brilliant blue antennules.

I believe these are Slipper Lobsters...I may be corrected shortly...

Looks like two tarantulas, right?  The one on the left is actually the husk of the one on the right.   Creepy.

Cone jellyfish?  Comb jelly?  To learn exactly what these are, you and I may both have to wait for the next post on this exhibit.  There are so many different types of jelly and non-jellyfish that I officially give up...for now.

Anthropod molts a tactile experience.  I was told not to touch them because I break things.

This area includes the touch tank (which you can see right behind the molt cart).

Gelatinous Zooplankton?

Just outside of the invert house...

Pair of Chinese Alligators (the other is pictured below) who came to the National Zoo in 2004.

Murphy, the Komodo Dragon

I'm really hoping to get a good pic of him with his tongue out.

Walking around Cleveland Park to find a late lunch.  This is the fancy side of the street (I didn't remember to take a picture of the other side, I was too hungry by then).

I really wanted to sit up on that balcony.

Wake Up Little Suzie is a cute lil tchotchke shop (just what I need).  We loved the lovely people working there that day.  We bought wallets from them.  We love those dang wallets.

Firehook Bakery.  We stopped for coffee here and sat outside, in the back.  They have a lovely little area (a lot of regulars entered through that back gate) and that fountain is the biggest bird bath I've ever seen.

Look at all those freaking birds!

Well, that is all I could salvage from my piece of poop camera.  Next time I'm bringing an iPhone, since it takes better photos (don't look at me lik that, I can't afford a fancy camera!).  Visit us again soon, we will have the feature post up, as soon as we get a chance to go out to  the zoo again!  And oh, we have so many things to show you.  Beautiful little thorny starfish, elegant coral and hopefully we can get a good photo for you of a nautilus and make it in time for the feeding of the baby octopus.  Let's visit Murphy one more time:

Mmmm...ratsicle.

DC Tools

If your attention has not already been drawn to it, yesterday saw the creation of a new page on Lost in DC.  Instead of working on the writing prompt for the Meetup I'm going to tomorrow, I rounded up some tools for you that I've been using since I arrived in the DC area.  For more information on UrbanSpoon, Yelp, Meetup and some other great tools for finding your way around the area (most of these will work for you, no matter where you live), go to the Not So Lost Tools tab.  Notice I went link crazy with The Washingtonian's site.  That's because it rocks.


This page will be a work in progress, so if you have any tools to recommend, please leave a comment on this post or contact us.




The newest tool I added (just this morning) is the site DC Blogs.  Aside from the brief description I gave on the Tools page, I wanted to let you know why I love the following sites, which I discovered just this morning, thanks to the DC Blogs live feed:


Hannah, Just Breathe:  This reminds me, I need to dye my hair.  I am always fascinated by the way women, in particular, react to getting older.  I've been dyeing my hair since I was 17 and think little of it, but of course there's some vanity involved - I've just never thought of it as an aging thing.  The On Going Gray post on this site is a lovely tribute to just living your life and not worrying about things you can't control, like the aging process.  There are so many things you could be doing that are better than freaking out about gray hair.  And I have to admit that I am forever jealous of LostGirls Meg's short and stylish, completely natural, gray hair - all the women in her family went gray young and looked good doin' it.


Shopping Hungry:  My friend Jessie and I have been talking a lot about coconut oil lately, so I had a good laugh when I saw the use Carrie at Shopping Hungry found for it in her post Weather Forecasts for the Modern, Single Lady.  And if I doubted that she's my kinda gal, all doubts were laid to rest with her post Words with "Medium Terrible" Friends.


Ghosts of DC:  Hipster beer is not the reason I will keep returning to this site.  Ghosts of DC's Tom has lived in the DC area for about twelve years now and expresses his love for the District by writing about its (often bizarre) history.  Wouldn't you like to read about the time that Puerto Rican Nationalists attempted to assassinate President Truman?  


As if I needed more reasons to never turn away from my computer.

Trees of Virginia

In March, Seth came to Virginia for a visit and allowed me to take him everywhere except Washington DC.  Neither of us are fans of crowds and we know we have plenty of time to do the tourist stuff when other people are around.  With just the two of us hanging out, we saw no reason why we shouldn't go exploring west of the DC area.  We, unfortunately, picked one of the worst days in March to go to Shenandoah National Park (about a two hour drive from where I live).  Considering how foggy it was, these photos can hardly do the park justice, but it will give you a rough idea of how amazing it is up there.  It also spurred Seth's curiosity and he has contributed his findings about the trees we saw (and those we did not) for today's post. - Jess



The Trees in Shenandoah National Park by Seth Abbott

The sight of the beautiful forested hillsides in the park at first brings to mind Longfellow’s introductory lines in the poem Evangeline:

“This is the forest primeval,

The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic”

View from Dickey Ridge Outlook in Shenandoah National Park

 However, as the national park guide explains, today’s view of the forests is not the same as that which Americans had viewed for centuries, for the 20th century saw the extinction of the majestic American chestnut and near extinction of the Eastern hemlock, two of the previously dominant trees in the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge mountains of Shenandoah National Park.

About 1904, the pathogenic sac fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, the cause of “chestnut blight, was accidentally introduced into the eastern United States through imported Asian chestnut lumber or trees. This caused a mass extinction of the majestic American chestnut tree, which grew between 50-200 feet in height with trunks up to 14 feet around and were the main lumber used to construct American houses east of the Mississippi for three centuries. Whereas the European and the Asian chestnut tree had some resistance to the chestnut blight, the larger American chestnut tree had none. By 1940, the American chestnut tree had been virtually wiped out and the chestnut blight had deforested almost a quarter of Shenandoah National Park.

Another large tree, the Eastern hemlock, had also been widespread in the southern Appalachians up until the 20th century. Timber harvesting had greatly reduced its numbers throughout the century, and in 1988, an Asian insect (the wooly agelid) arrived to nearly wipe out the Eastern hemlock population.

The Massanutten!  This is as far as we got before the fog banks made us turn back.

With few hemlocks and chestnut trees present today, the view of the park forests is now dominated by red oak, maple, birch, and ash. As seen in the photos, the mountains are beautifully forested, but one is left with a lingering sadness at the loss of what had been the most majestic of the Appalachian trees. Today, we do not see the forest primeval at the park.

View from Signal Knob Outlook in Shenandoah National Park

Heading back down and away from the fog.

For further information on Shenandoah National Park, the trees of the region and the Appalachian Trail (Virginia has more miles of the trail in it than any other state it goes through), we recommend the following books (all available in our store or by clicking on the picture below):

Once you're done being saddened by the loss of trees and you are worn out from hiking, go get yourself an amazing burger and fries at Spelunker's in Front Royal.  Greasy awesomeness.  The name Spelunker's comes from the nearby Luray Caverns and Skyline Caverns where you can go, that's right, spelunking.  Check out the Fried Eggs at Luray Caverns.