Lots of history in Great Falls and a great place to hike. We normally park in the Difficult Run rail parking lot and then hike into Great Falls park from there. It's just a scrubby trail until you go under Georgetown Pike, then it takes you through a very scenic valley until you reach the Potomac. You can stay on the Ridge Trail or go along the shore of the Potomac and bushwhack back up when you run out of trail - that's what we decided to do.
The trail heads inland a bit and then continues along the rim of the Potomac canyon, with some dynamite views of the cliffs on the Maryland side of the river. It is a pretty easy hike - there is elevation gain but generally pretty gradually. There was some kind of Asian Wanderbirds club out hiking as several dozen older Asian people in a wide variety of nylon jackets were coming from the direction of the Great Falls visitor center.
Once you reach the visitors center, you are rewarded with the traditional awesome view of the Falls. It was pretty cold out and there were no whitewater kayakers out challenging the Falls, but we did see only lonely open-deck canoeist working his way downstream. Normally, we head back from this point for a 6 mile loop, but we continued north to check out the trail to Riverbend Park. It follows the old Patowmack Canal up to the diversion dam across the Potomac. It looked like a side trail came in from the south there, opening up a loop opportunity but we saved that for another day and back tracked to the visitor center. From there it was a pleasant hike along the Carriage Trail back to the parking lot for a total of a bit under 7 miles.
Here's an elevation profile of the hike - you can see the steep uphill part where we bushwhacked up from the river, but in general this is a pretty mild hike from the climbing point of view. Below is the interactive map of the hike - at the northern end you can clearly see where the diversion dam is above the falls.
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