A new Hyattsville running club, which got its start earlier this year, meets each week for a run welcoming anyone who wants to join.

Since Mike Cemprola, Randelle Ripton and David Rease started the group in January, RunnersHy, as its called, has met at 9 a.m. on Sundays at Vigilante Coffee in Hyattsville for a three- or four-mile run on local trails.

There is no set pace and runners of all skill levels are invited to join the group, which takes a different route each week, going up to College Park through the Rhode Island Avenue Trolley Trail or heading south toward Bladensburg Waterfront Park.

The runners all have different motivations and experiences. Cemprola began running to lose weight in 2005 and ended up doing marathons and even a 50-miler before dialing back due to an injury. Ripton began running outside during the pandemic.

Member Chelsea Champlin told the Hyattsville Wire that the running group, which has been as few as five and as many as 18, has become a community of its own.

“It’s been really great to celebrate birthdays, meet members’ new babies, and cheer on and congratulate runners in their races,” she said.

After the run, the group of about a dozen runners often stops for coffee and pastries at Vigilante, and always posting a group photo on its Instagram page afterward with a map of that week’s run. They’re even planning to print up matching T-shirts.

Runners on the Route 1 corridor can also join College Park Parkrun, which meets every Saturday at 9 a.m. on the Paint Branch Trail at 4289 Metzerott Rd.

Further, the Prince George’s Running Club holds regular runs around the area.

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Water lilies and lotus plants are in bloom at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, which is holding its annual festival to mark the occasion.

Located at 1550 Anacostia Ave. NE, just minutes from the Route 1 corridor, the 70-acre marsh is home to a variety of water plants and popular with everything from ospreys and herons to the occasional roseate spoonbird or wild turkey.

But it’s the water lilies and lotus plants that are the park’s highlights, drawing comparisons  to the cherry blossoms found in downtown D.C.

The park’s annual Lotus and Lily Festival kicked off July 15 and runs through Saturday, July 22. Events include everything from tours with park rangers to scavenger hunts, painting classes and lessons on foraging.

The theme for Sunday, July 16, is Asian cultures and the Lotus, with Buddhist chanting, Thai music and dancing, the Chinese Lotus Dance, and classical Indian and Bollywood-inspired dancing. The events will be held rain or shine.

The Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, but it will stay open until 5 p.m. this Sunday.

Visitors hoping to get the full experience might want to go first thing in the morning, when the lotuses and lilies are open, as the flowers tend to close as the sun gets brighter.

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Pennyroyal Station won an award for the best casual restaurant in the greater D.C. area.

The Mount Rainier eatery located at 3310 Rhode Island Ave., was recognized this week at the 41st annual Rammy Awards for its “dedication to dining excellence, service, and value in a casual environment,” beating fellow nominees Bammy’s, Destino, Maketto and Tonari.

Hosted by the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in D.C., the black-tie event also featured nominations for Era Wine Bar next door in Mount Rainier and Spice Kitchen West African Grill at the miXt Food Hall in Brentwood.

Nominees had to be members of the RAMW, and winners were voted on by members of the public.

At last year’s ceremony, Brentwood’s Little Miner Taco and Riverdale Park’s 2Fifty Texas BBQ won awards, while Pennyroyal Station and College Park’s Tacos A La Madre were nominated. The awards are the latest sign of how the Route 1 corridor’s restaurant scene has come of age.

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The popular Maryland restaurant chain Iron Rooster is opening in College Park.

Located inside the Hotel at the University of Maryland, the 6,000-square-foot restaurant will be the fifth for Iron Rooster, joining locations in Annapolis and Baltimore.

Iron Rooster serves family-style Southern cooking, featuring breakfast all day, with specialties such as house-made pop tarts, chicken and waffles and a crab hash. You can get also order lunch and dinner items like fried chicken, a BLT&E or a turkey wrap.

Whatever you order, there’s a decent chance it will come with bacon, which adorns everything from a Bloody Mary to the breakfast nachos. You can also get a mason jar of free bacon by showing your server proof that you followed the restaurant on social media.

The restaurant is aiming to open by the start of the fall semester and will have an outdoor patio.

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You can legally swim in the Anacostia River for a few hours this September.

Swimming has been illegal in the river since 1971 due to pollution, but infrastructure improvements and other efforts have improved water quality enough that D.C. is allowing the sanctioned swim.

Organized by the Anacostia Riverkeeper, the Splash community event will allow participants over the age of 18 to swim off the Kingman Island Dock near the National Arboretum for 20-minute time slots with a pre-registration.

Originally scheduled for this weekend, the Riverkeeper announced Friday that it would be postponed until Saturday, Sept. 16, due to several recent bursts of rain that could stir up pollution in the river. All registrations for this weekend are automatically being transferred for that date.

The city has been slowly moving to improve water quality in the Anacostia since the 1970s, with lawsuits against chemical manufacturers and agricultural companies and the new Anacostia River Tunnel, which directs sewage overflow to a wastewater treatment plant.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has also long promoted an effort to make the river swimmable and fishable by 2025.

In 2022, the DC Citizen Science Water Quality Monitoring Program found that bacteria levels passed recreational water quality standards at Kingman Island, Buzzards Point and Washington Channel over 90 percent of the time.

There is still work to be done. The Riverkeeper says dredging the river bottom would remove toxins that accumulated long ago and create more capacity for big storms.

But the sanctioned swim in September is meant to highlight the progress that the city has made over the last 50 years.

To register for the swim, go online here.

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A writer and a photographer from Mount Rainier are drawing attention to the ongoing devastation of the area’s ash trees.

For the last three years, science writer Gabe Popkin and photographer Leslie Brice have visited ash tree groves stretching from the Route 1 corridor to the Eastern Shore to document trees dying from the emerald ash borer.

A native of Asia, the ash borer first came to Michigan in 2002 and then spread to Maryland through an illegal shipment of infested trees sent to a Brandywine nursery. Their larvae damage ash trees by digging tunnels that disrupt the flow of nutrients.

Popkin and Brice have compiled their words and images on the Ash Forest Project, which was on display at Joe’s Movement Emporium earlier this year and featured recently on NPR’s “Here and Now.”

Ash tree groves have long been sprinkled along the Anacostia River, where they help maintain forested swamps, a unique ecosystem. They are one reason why Hyattsville’s tree canopy declined by a third from 2009 to 2018.

“To see these places start to get wiped out, it really felt like we were losing something important, and something that most people aren’t even aware of,” Popkin said recently.

Because ash borer infestations has a 99% mortality rate, groups like the Anacostia Watershed Society are attempting to restore the ash tree groves in places like Bladensburg Waterfront Park by planting as many as a dozen different varieties of tree to see which ones might succeed.

You can support the Ash Forest Project online here or subscribe to Popkin’s nature writing Substack here.

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Residents of Colmar Manor, just off Route 1, created a giant interactive map the size of a basketball court as they plan the town’s future.

In a recent town meeting, residents of all ages were invited to paint their home onto the 60-foot-by-40-foot map, play games and eat pizza.

The map came with moveable pieces representing things like trees, speed bumps and traffic lights to brainstorm ideas for how the town could work better.

These kinds of meetings, called charettes, are often used by urban planners to spur creative thinking by residents about a city, but the giant map is an unusual touch.

The meeting was held at Colmar Manor town hall on the gymnasium floor. The map will be updated in future meetings this summer.

People have been living in the area since the 1600s, but the town wasn’t formally incorporated until 1927. Its name is a portmanteau of Columbia and Maryland.

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