Brookside Gardens March 2025

We visited Brookside Gardens to enjoy the spring weather (80 degrees Fahrenheit in March!). The flowers weren't quite blooming yet but the gardens are still a peaceful place to visit. A lot of people were there enjoying the first taste of summer-like weather.

We saw a couple of spheres, one of which is part of a geocache.

Metal sphere in the Maple Terrace

How much patience to put this together?

The Wedding Gazebo does host special events but it is in the middle of the gardens. The white and purple flowers around it are lovely.

Wedding Gazebo

Flowers close up

Other early bloomers

By the Children's Garden is a bug hotel, a happy home from which pollinators do their job.

Plenty of vacancies

The garden has a small labyrinth nestled between two ponds. 

Pond with island and labyrinth

Walking the labyrinth

Can you spot the turtle in the pond?

Easier in real life

Also, it blends in with the water

Beautiful trees by the garden

Out by the road is the 40th Anniversary Grove, another quiet spot for relaxing. It is a bit out of the way from the rest of the gardens and was empty!

The stream that separates the Anniversary Grove from the rest

Sitting area

The gardens also have a virtual geocache, so I took a picture by the Formal Garden and Greenhouses.

Getting geo-credit

Typically, we visit Brookside in the winter for their Christmas lights. It's nice to come in the daytime and in warmer weather to enjoy the garden part of the gardens.

Geocaching March 2025

The month start with some spotty caching here and there. I am not back into the full swing of things yet after the death of my son.

My first set of caches was during my daughter's robotics competition. I dropped her off early and took an hour to find some caches at nearby John Downs Memorial Park. The Wishing Bench is in a formal garden from back in the day when the land was a summer home. The bench is still there and is supposed to grant wishes if you sit quietly and wish hard.

The wishing bench

The pic with me wishing

Also in the park are Lying Downs on the Job, Downs and Outs, and Ups and Downs. They are scattered around the park, making for some nice walks.

Beach part of the caching

Busted with a bowtie

Outside the park was LSLS #1 Blair Loves Books, a geocache part of the Lake Shore Love Series. I only found this first one.

Later, I returned to the Warriors and Brothers In Arms trail with Tunnel Rat and Dorie Miller. Nearby Glendale's Finest is an easy find behind a fire station.

The "tunnel" in Tunnel Rat

Pointe du Hoc is another WBIA find the next day. The day after was Pi Day (3/14) and I found a round-containered Use Your Head. 

On the second weekend of my daughter's robotic competition, I was close enough to DC to sneak in and find Masonic - Scottish Rite Temple, a wherigo cache that told stories about the Masonic Temple in the nation's capital. 

Locus of the cache

An earthcache took me to Meridian Hill Park to find a statue called "Serenity." Serene But Weathered Carrara Marble describes the deterioration of the statue from vandalism and the elements.

Seen better days

Just outside the park I found a fun container for Slow Going, a traditional cache.

I few days later I picked up two cemetery caches: Chapel Hill - Waterloo and Old Salem Church and Cemetery. 

Chapel Hill Cemetery, on a hill as described

Old Salem Church

Sneak Attack was a tricky find near the church--I needed a photo from a previous finder. 

Notables in Forest Glen Cemetery is part of a series of multicaches focusing on famous people buried in the DC area. It was easy to solve. On the way to the final cache I found Carolina Wren and after the find Can You Hear Me Now #2. 

Reston Rocks is an earthcache next to a lake in Reston, Virginia. The rocky outcropping is unlikely and provides a little info on the ancient history of the area.

A nice lake

Rocks!

I avenged a DNF (Did Not Find) at Check Me Out... by a roadside. Also nearby, I discovered Among the Rocks and Mints-Mints-Mints.... 

Carol 103 west was an easy find during my youngest's orchestra rehearsal. The next day I had CCT - 50 Events - Challenge Cache Trail done.

We went for a kayaking adventure in Annapolis and I was able to get a picture for the Ego Alley virtual cache.

Me not in the water

On a trip to Brookside Gardens, I took a picture for the Welcome to Brookside Gardens virtual cache and the Brookside Gardens Labyrinth multi-cache. I also completed all the stages for the local Adventure Lab but couldn't make it to the bonus cache that day.

For the virtual

At the labyrinth

I finished the month filling another calendar day with a mystery/unknown cache, CCT - 3 Continents, which requires the cacher to have found geocaches on three different continents. We honeymooned in Middle Earth, I mean, New Zealand, so I had credit for Oceana in addition to North America and Europe.

I end the month with 34 finds and a grand total of 1757.

Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens 2018

We went again to the Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens (see the previous trip here). We went on the Saturday before Christmas and had to wait quite a while to get into the parking lot. Perseverance paid off and we wound up in the smaller lot right next to the train display. That became our first stop.

Conservatory at Brookside Gardens

The conservatory is a big greenhouse, so they had plenty of plants on display. We only stopped to look at one since we wanted to catch the trains.

Poinsettias 

The train display was more or less exactly the same as previous years, but that's okay since it's a fantastic display.

Big train table!

Other end of the table with a conservatory replica

Dragon!

The side display recreates a trolley route from Washington up to the Cabin John Hotel.

Georgetown Car Barn (with Exorcist stairs!)

Band and dancers at Glen Echo!

Cabin John Hotel

We wandered through the outdoor lights, which were delightful as usual.

Just outside the conservatory

Loch Ness Monster recreation

A fox

A turtle

Some trees and teepees

A dragonfly

At the Visitors Center, they were serving snacks and had entertainment. The band was The Eclectiks, a Celtic-inspired group that did pop classics and more traditional tunes. Naturally, they played Christmas favorites in their own style.

The Eclectiks

The garden is celebrating fifty years of existence and commemorated that in light!

Birthday lights!

The visit was fun and we will probably go back next year!

Garden of Lights at Brookside Garden--Trains, Plants, Jazz

A continuation from yesterpost...

The Garden of Lights wasn't just lights in the garden. Down the hill from the visitor center are the conservatories. The conservatories are basically greenhouses with plants still growing in them. They were open for touring and, naturally, they had some Christmas plants on display.

Pointsettas

Okay, not as Christmasy

A waterfall hiding in the lushness

The big draw at the conservatories was the train set provided by The Washington, Virginia, Maryland Garden Railway Society. In addition to making an incredible model railway, they added in some fun characters (like Wonder Woman, Yoda, Moana, and many others). If that wasn't enough, they also made scavenger hunt sheets (with pictures) for the younger visitors. Our kids had a great time trying to find everything on their sheet. They even had three different sheets of scavengables! We had a good, long time in the warmth of the conservatory, for which we parents were quite grateful.

One end of the main train set

A little town

Wonder Woman takes the train

A pond with Yoda on the shore

The other end of the train set

The conservatory, much like the one we were in

The train set along the wall had a bunch of actual historical spots, some of them no longer extant. The kids were clueless but we adults enjoyed seeing places like Glen Echo Park, which brought up many fond memories from our dancing days.

A bit of Georgetown, District of Columbia

Glen Echo Park entrance

Dentzel Carousel at Glen Echo

Bumper Car Pavilion at Glen Echo

The Cabin John Hotel--read about it here

Baltzley Castle--read about it here

We went back to the visitor center to get some hot cocoa (which we had promised to the kids). The Cafe, in addition to providing hot cocoa and snacks, also sold smores kits for people to use on the outdoor fire. The best part of the cafe was the band playing. Close Enough for Jazz is the "official jazz ensemble for the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL)" (at least, according to their web site. Who knows how many unofficial jazz ensembles they have?). My wife and I enjoyed dancing to jazzy versions of Christmas classics. We don't have any footage of us dancing but we did get some of the band playing...



The Garden of Lights is going on through January 1, 2018, and presumably will be back next year. I think we'll be back next year too!