'Round DC 2009

Millersville, MD to Millersville, MD
10-12 October 2009

The Plan

A simple loop around the District of Columbia without actually entering DC. Millersville to Alexandria, VA over the new Wilson Bridge. Then north and west to Frederick, MD. And finally back home.

This can be done without entering DC, except than when you’re on the Wilson Bridge there is a short time when you are actually over a part of the Potomac River where the river bottom belongs to DC. This is an artifact of the original Royal charter establishing the Maryland-Virginia boundary—Maryland got the river bottom up to the high-tide line on the Virginia shore. Thus all the islands in the river belong to Maryland and DC—since DC was carved from Maryland. So does DC exercise sovereignty over that small piece of the Wilson Bridge that passes over a sliver of its river bottom? I say no. Otherwise circumnavigation of DC by bicycle would take more than three days. Next