It's one of the prettiest trails in the area.
Ride beside rolling water along curves amidst pine trees and green grass with an occasional statue to grasp your view and you won't even notice the lull of the vehicles motoring on the nearby George Washington Parkway.
Be mindful of children on uncertain paths and their parents on the trail, and the speeding pros who'll run you down faster than Herman Cain can break out in song. And watch the overheads for the airplanes landing at National Airport.
Take your hammock for some easy stretching and some shut-eye in between your rides. The trail stretches about 18 miles from Theodore Roosevelt Island to George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon and can be crowded at times.
If you're coming by car, you may park for free at Gravelly Point (can be hard to find a space) or the Washington Sailing Marina just beyond the airport where you'll find almost-clean restrooms, a great bike shop with rentals at nominal prices and a nice attendant who may put air in your tires without charge, and two waterfront restaurants (one fancy, Indigo Landing, and the other, a café with sandwiches and the critical menu item, beer).
All this loveliness is captured (in variation) by thoughts of William Wordsworth's poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," probably better known as "The Daffodils," inspired by a April 15, 1802 scene found by Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a trail,
Whose beauty is unmatched for real,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Cyclers were racing in the breeze.
Continuous as the men who whine
on Capitol Hill they often say
The bikers stretched in a long line
along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
riding their bikes in sprightly dance.
The aeroplanes above them flew; the bikers
Oblivious in their wheeling spree,
A walker could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the bikers to me had brought:
For not enough on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the soul of solitude;
And then some thoughts of bliss are stirred,
When I recall the happy bicyclers.
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