OnFootBlog.com

I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.

When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.

That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.

Today’s new circuit is a hybrid of a loop and an out-and-back setup, totalling just over 6.2 miles. Within that distance, you’ll see one of Baltimore’s wealthiest neigborhoods, as well as one of its most blighted. The transition between the two is fascinating in itself, as you go from East Baltimore to Charles Village and back (or vice versa).

That statement is not meant to knock the East-Baltimore/Waverly neighborhoods. The spreading wealth of the Station North redevelopment will hopefully soon start making good on some of the promise this area holds. While that transition is in progress, however, you’ll probably want to take this route on a summer morning with a friend — not alone at night. (That, of course, is decent advice for any recreational run or walk, if possible.)

There are beautiful endpoints on this course, with a lot of pretty blocks along the way. Assuming you aren’t dying to clock some sort of super-metronomic 10K PR, the scenery is well worth the time you’ll put into hopping up and down at traffic lights. Check out the map. As always, you can find a bunch of other posts with mapped runs/walks/bikes in the Baltimore area here.

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Of note: This is a good route for runners and walkers, but you’ll find few bike lanes through most of it. This is a disappointment, as the area is in fairly direct proximity to several universities (Loyola/ND, Johns Hopkins and Morgan State are closest). That said, this loop is served by the route 61 and 13 buses, which should theoretically have bike racks now. That could at least make it easier if this area is part of a longer bike trip.

We just moved to Hampden, in the northern part of Baltimore.

It’s near a bunch of stuff including my workplace, a few farm markets, two grocery stores, JHU, MSU, Notre Dame / Loyola, an MTA light rail stop, two movie theaters, two public libraries in the Pratt system … etc.,.

Forgive me for sounding like a bad PR writer. I promise that this post should be the worst of my gloating.

Anyhow, almost as cool as all of the stuff I just listed is the neighborhood’s proximity to the Jones Falls Trail. I still have yet to explore the trail in full, but here’s a start — a loop through a bit of the neighborhood, including Druid Hill Park and the Maryland Zoo.

Check out the map to see details. Some of this may be slightly off, as I used an old city planning document to get the path of the JFT for my route map.