And Now We're Walking to the Airport

The tower at Ronald Regan National Airport as seen from the Mount Vernon Trail

Tonight, in an exploring mood, we discovered that we can walk from our apartment door directly to the departure gates of Ronald Reagan National Airport in about 30 minutes.

For our daily exercise stroll, we decided to walk a portion of the Mt. Vernon Trail, a popular 18-mile exercise route which runs behind our apartment complex and links Theodore Roosevelt  Island in D.C. with George Washington's home. Now while we had traversed the 5-mile northern section of the trail from Crystal City to the Roosevelt nature retreat, we had never headed south.

About a 1/2 mile onto the trail, we encountered a sign which said Reagan Airport and pointed left. "You want to try it?," Judy asked. "Why not," I replied.

So we took the trail branch, wound through the underground walkway that ran under the airport access road, followed the signs to Parking Garage C, headed up the elevator to the 2nd floor, and found ourselves a few steps from the moving walkway that would carry us to the wide corridors for the retail stores and secure monitored gates of the airport.

We decided to keep going.  With more than 2/3 of the arriving and departing flights cancelled due to Hurricane Irene, the airport, or at least the part of the airport we could visit, was virtually deserted. 

We did find that Reagan contains a 5 Guys, a California Tortilla, and a Potbelly's, which just happen to be my 3 favorite DC food chains. I also wondered what would happen to all the memorabilia, including date-marked T-shirts and posters, on sale for the planned unveiling and dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, which was postponed until sometime in September or October because of the impacts of Hurricane Irene.

Travelers' Tip:
Although we probably will never use it, it's environmentally nice to know that Reagan National has a secure bike area for those who would like to pedal their way to the airport.