Walking Arlington (part 1) Where the Sidewalk Ends

 In three weeks, Bill and I walked one hundred miles.  We hadn't gone very far, and we'd retraced our path many times, but we covered a lot of ground.

Our quarantine hobby is to walk all of the residential streets in Arlington County; we are more than halfway towards our goal.  Before the quarantine, date night would mean going out to see a movie or a concert and eating out.  Now we walk our dog

We walk our dog every day, but with the quarantine, this duty which was usually done by one or the other of us, started to become something we could do together.  

At first we walked our usual routes, or we'd mix it up by walking it in reverse,  or adding a little detour.  Then we started crossing the borders of our neighborhood and began to explore places we had never walked before.  What if walked that bike path under route 50?  What's on the other side of Glebe Road? How far can we walk down Columbia Pike?

Eventually we walked every neighborhood that we could get to from our house.  One day I looked at Bill and said, "You know, we could get in the car and drive to another neighborhood and then walk from there."  And so we did.  At some point we felt like we must have walked most of Arlington, so we found a paper bicycle map in a drawer and started to mark off all of the streets we had walked.  Well, it wasn't even close. We needed a plan. So we pinned the map up on the wall and started being more methodical planning our walks.  

We have chipped away at areas that seemed impossibly vast.  We have started using Google maps to track our walks so we can make sure we haven't missed any streets.  Some neighborhoods have a fairly logical grid to follow, but most don't.  A lot of backtracking, abruptly turning around, and walking tiny cul de sacs are par for the course. 

The hardest task has been walking the border between Arlington and Fairfax.  You have to keep your eyes open for clues: street signs change color; trash cans look different and Neighborhood Watch signs appear.  But the most reliable clue seems to be that Arlington stops where the sidewalk ends.