Drumming in the Park

We try to take the dogs to a new park every weekend as a way of getting ourselves to a new park every weekend. We are not totally rigorous about the effort, having fallen back on good old neigboring Dumbarton last weekend, but with an increased toll of guilt on Sunday, Oscar leaping in the air every time we left the house in anticipation of accompanying us, we decided on Meridian Hill Park. We had driven by the park back on Easter Sunday and thought the imposing western facade was very unique and wanted to make sure we eventually checked it out. This park is also know for having a Drum Circle every Sunday afternoon, so we got to kill two birds with one stone.

The park is not too large, only about two city blocks, but does have some impressive city views as at it's southern end, it is raised a good 20-30 feet above the city. This is where the drum circle performs. There are about 20 drummers with all manner of percussion instruments, and a crowd of about a hundred or so looking on or just relaxing in the general vicinity. Not being an expert in these things, I won't offer a classification, though I will hazard a guess at it being Afro-Carribean in origin. Very cool, authentic, "only in..." type thing to do. The weather was cooling off though so we could not stay long. We walked the dogs around the park once to try to tire them out (it does not take much) before getting back in the car. We canvassed to the Columbia Heights, Mt Pleasant, Kalarama Mews, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods to get a feel for them in our ever expanding apartment search before heading home.