My left toe clip has been coming loose, so I stopped at this oil change station to borrow a tool to hook it back up.
The trail changes to the Panhandle Trail where you enter Pennsylvania.
The trails were gorgeous and well-paved.
They let us take the bikes in the car.
Here's the view out the window of the incline.
We had a wonderful stay with our Warmshowers.org hosts, Zach and Shaena. They fed us a delicious home-cooked meal and gave me a couple of washers and the tools needed to do a permanent fix on my toe clip.
From there we found our way to the Hot Metal Bridge, so called because that's where they used to transport iron across the river for further processing.
At the trailhead leading to the bridge I met Art Fleming, a trail monitor, who was preparing to spend several hours clearing trash.
From Pittsburgh we were travelling on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) trail, an unpaved but well-packed rails-to-trails conversion that follows the Monongahela River to Mckeesport and the Youghiogheny after that. In McKeesport, everyone was missing this turn on the trail, including me, until Val found the sign and pointed it out.
We chatted with another local rider, "CM" from Bhutan, who biked with us a bit.
A barge on the Monongahela.
Crossing the Monongahela on the way to McKeesport.
The Red Waterfall is runoff from an old coal mine. It causes lots of pollution but is kind of pretty.
I continued on the trail along the Youghiogheny River.
We met for a nice lunch in Ohiopyle but by the time we finished there was a heavy thunderstorm, so we just drove the 11 miles to Confluence. (This photo is looking out the car windshield.)
We stayed in the cabin at Wendy's World campground in Confluence.
Wendy runs a tight ship. It took Val a lot of persuasion to get Wendy to make a one-time exception to the no-bicycles-in-the-cabin rule.
Val's string of bad luck continued. The plan today was for her to do the normal trick of driving to the destination, cycling back on the route to meet me, and then riding together to the end. She just entered Frostburg into her iPhone and expected Google maps to lead her to the correct place.
Unfortunately I had neglected to tell her that we were going to Frostburg MD, not Frostburg PA! I had forgotten that we go from Pittsburgh PA to Gettysburg PA via Maryland. She described a hilarious scene in a tobacco store in Frostburg PA where none of the patrons could make head nor tail of her Adventure Cycling map of Frostburg MD. By the time she got to the correct Frostburg it was too late for her to ride.
I felt a little guilty that I had a nice ride. I think this is the Casselman River.
This is the Salisbury Viaduct.
I went over the eastern continental divide. I was travelling from right to left on this elevation profile that is located at the divide.
The Big Savage tunnel is about 0.6 miles long and was an engineering triumph at its time.
It is well-lit on the inside.
I crossed the Mason-Dixon line into Maryland. (Where I should have thought to call Val and make sure she was driving to the right state.)
The Mason-Dixon line is famous today for being the dividing line between the north and the south in the Civil War. (Gettysburg is about 10 miles north of the line.) It was laid out by Mason and Dixon before the revolutionary war as a means to settle a dispute between the Penn and the Calvert families, landowners in the British colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland, who had fought over the boundary for three generations.
The Big Savage tunnel was built in 1911.
There is a switchbacked trail leading up the hill from the GAP trail to the town of Frostburg. It is decorated with several sculptures.
Frostburg is one of several formerly-decaying towns on the bike trail that now cater to cyclists. However there was nothing open on a Sunday so for lunch we had sandwiches of bagels and some porkchops, Muenster cheese, and mustard plus some potato salad and Perrier water that Val had in her ice chest. We weren't suffering too much.
Then I rode the rest of the way to Cumberland.
Val says that everything Alan says about the C&O is a vast understatement!
The canal is filled with snags and algae.
But the scenery is beautiful.
You pass by numerous locks. This is number 72.
Not all of the canal is covered with algae.
The Paw Paw tunnel is not lit like the Big Savage. I had to walk the bike in the pitch black, feeling the railing with one hand to stay on the path.
After a bit I fished my Fly12 headlight/video camera out of a pannier in the dark and managed to get it mounted and turned on. Here's a short video of what it was like to walk the bike through the tunnel:
We're travelling along the Potomac River.
This park is where the trail comes out in Hancock.
The bike and my shoes were covered with mud by the end of the ride, even though the bike has fenders. I washed everything using a hose on the side of the hotel building.
From about 12 miles before Hancock to 10 miles after you can get off the C&O canal trail and ride the adjacent Western Maryland Rail Trail. It has a beautiful paved surface, much nicer than the C&O.
I think the C&O is a good trail for someone on a suspended mountain bike who doesn't mind getting muddy, but not so good on a road bike.
I had no desire to ride any more of the C&O than necessary so we rode together to the end of the rail trail and then rode back to Hancock where we had lunch at the fabulous Buddylou's for lunch. Buddylou's is a combination ice cream parlour, foodie restaurant decorated in 60's decor, antique store, and the studio of an oldies radio station tucked in a corner of the dining room. (Notice the cut-off flannel shirt sleeves used as a curtain.)
Big Mike is the on-air personality.
Note the old-timey decor on this photo. They had old-fashioned small-screen cathode-ray tube TV sets showing reruns of the I Love Lucy show. (I swear I rarely have root beer floats at home.)
After rejoining the C&O the surface was much better than the earlier part I had been on. Still rough gravel and uneven surface but few mudholes, although it did get worse later on.
We're still following the Potomac.
I had to wait for this train and then pulled over into the gas station on the other side to let the line of cars go by. I took the opportunity to buy a root beer.
I passed into Pennsylvania for the last time.
Getting close to Gettysburg:
Val met me a little past Blue Ridge Summit. We ate our final bagel peanut butter and jelly sandwiches of the trip for lunch.
And then rode into Gettysburg together.
My cycle computer shows a total for the tour of 3970 miles. Val wants me to do another 30 miles to get up to 4000. I guess I'm not into getting a certain round number for bragging rights. It's the same reason I didn't arrange the route so I could dip wheels in both oceans. I missed the coasts by a few miles on both ends.
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Last updated August 27, 2018