C & O Canal Towpath

30 June - 2 July 2008 Steve and I decided it was time to try out hands at a bit of bike touring/camping/trail riding - which we thought could all be neatly wrapped up by a trip along the C&O Canal Towpath. It seemed the wise choice for a first attempt at such an adventure - close to home, many camping options (sites every 5 miles or so), plenty of towns along the way for resupply and meals - and now that this trail connects to the Great Allegheny Passage it could act as the shakedown for a much longer 350 mile tour from DC to Pittsburgh one day in the future.

The original plan was to set out early from Bethesda and ride out to a campsite shortly past Harpers Ferry the first day. On Day Two we would ride out and back to somewhere beyond Shepherdstown. Then on Day Three we would ride back to Bethesda. We mostly managed stick to our plan...

After sitting in a traffic back up for an hour or so (ah the joys of the capital beltway) we arrived in Bethesda almost on schedule... We parked Steve's truck at a friends house (thanks Astrid) and headed down to the towpath.
Our first challenge appeared to be getting down to and over the canal - first a dirt trail with a steep staircase of switchbacks and then the bridge pictured above - the trickiest part was a rather steep staircase down from the bridge and onto the towpath. Once we were off and rolling I was amazed at how quiet empty the trail was even though we were still well within the beltway. While there was the occasional walker/jogger/biker we mostly had the trail to ourselves.

We quickly came up on the first of many locks we'd pass in the next few days - in this lower section not only has the park service managed to keep the canal watered, but many of the locks are still functioning and they offer rides on a canal boat up near Great Falls.

I was quite pleasantly surprised at the condition of the towpath throughout the trip - especially the first 20 miles or so when it was a hard packed stone/dirt surface. We found that even loaded down as we were we could keep a reasonable pace of 10-14 miles and hour and for the most part we able to ride side by side and pass the time chewing the fat.

One of my favorite stretches on this first day was around Great Falls when the canal widened up with sheer rock faces lining the opposite shore. Another striking feature of these watered sections of the canal was the freakishly bright green algae that covered the surface in some parts - there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason about which parts had it and which didn't - sometimes in very still sections and sometimes when the water seemed to be moving, sometimes in open sunny sections and sometimes in forested shady stretches....

After a couple hours we reached Whites Ferry - the last regular ferry service still operating across the Potomac - we had lunch at the general store here - I went with a grilled cheese and Steve went with the "Barge Burger" (which was just a hamburger) and we split the "Ferry Fries" which had to be the greasiest fries I've ever eaten. My favorite tidbit from this pitstop was the sign for canoe rentals explaining that you had to be 36 years old to rent a canoe - I was dying to ask how they came up with 36 as the cutoff point, but the kid behind the counter had already informed us that it was his first week there when I asked another random question.

After lunch we passed across the Monocacy Aqueduct, the largest of the many large structures built to carry the canal and towpath over the many rivers and streams that feed into the Potomac. It must have been an amazing site to see a barge carrying 100 tons of coal floating across this structure over the Monacacy River. There were two new treats beyond the Monacacy - things got a bit muddier and the canal began to parallel the old B&O (now CSX/MARC train tracks) - the first train to pass announced itself with an astonishingly loud horn that nearly threw both Steve and I off our bikes... we would eventually become quite accustomed to this sound more on that later.

As we passed Brunswick we met a backpacker, surprisingly one of the only ones we saw on the towpath, he was attempting to put on his poncho, but needed a hand getting it over his backpack. He more than returned the favor by giving us a tip on a restaurant to check out in Brunswick on the ride back.

It had been raining on and off throughout the day, but luckily the towpath was fairly tree covered. As we left Brunswick and got closer to Harpers Ferry the tree cover began to thin and we started to get a little bit wetter with each passing shower. This coupled with a desire for dinner and a hope to set up camp before sundown led us to pick up the pace a bit. For a while we were hammering along at a pretty good clip (>15mph), and then about a half mile out from Harpers Ferry, Steve got a rather loud flat tire. We quickly changed the tube and got rolling again - hoping to set up camp and then double back to Harpers Ferry for dinner. We got about a half mile north of Harpers Ferry when the same tire blew again - this time blowing apart the dollar Steve had inserted as a boot to cover the slit in the tire. At this point we decided that a new tire was perhaps in order - so we headed back to Harpers Ferry hoping the bike shop would still be open, but we missed it by about half hour. Dinner seemed the best plan and we set of in search of a restaurant. Over dinner we regrouped and made a plan to stay somewhere in town so we could hit the bike shop when it reopened. We found a hostel just around the corner - the Town's Inn.

We had breakfast with a two guys from the hostel - one a retiree from Massachusetts who was thru hiking the Appalachian Trail to raise money for the Lion's Club charity for sight, a very nice guy who it seems had never really done any back packing before he set out. The other guy was bike touring on a trike - he had started out from Florida and seemed to be one of those people who has done nearly everything. It was a lively breakfast conversation of tales from the road and trails.

Once back in town we eventually got into the bike shop to acquire the new tire and some more spare tubes - managed to get back on the trail by 11 or so. We started out with a jaunt north about 10 miles or so to Shepherdstown where we had a great lunch at a quite unexpected middle eastern place - Shaharazade's. Then Steve and I both went off in search of a treat to celebrate before beginning the journey back to Bethesda - for Steve a slice of chocolate cake and for me a peanut butter smoothie. Then it was back on the road - the climb up from the trail to town had been a bit grueling with our loaded panniers - the descent back proved to be a little terrifying all that weight and cross winds across the bridge really tested my bike handling...

The rain kept threatening, but never really got to bad and we made good time as we headed for our next goal - dinner in Brunswick at Beans in the Belfry - the place the hiker tipped us off about the day before.

This was a great little cafe in an old church - that seemed to be a real diamond in the rough based on the little bit of riding around town we did trying to find the place. We had a very tasty dinner and some more treats from the bakery case... then it was back onto the trail to find a campsite to bed down for the night. We both feared that there wasn't enough daylight left to get far enough down the trail to find a site past where the train tracks split away from the trail - and indeed we did wind up camping quite close to the tracks. Now I've camped near train tracks many times - as a kid I always assumed that KOA was owned by the railroads as the always seemed to be close to the tracks. However this was closer than I ever remember being - I could swear I could feel the ground shake as the trains approached and we seemed to be near some kind of intersection as they seemed committed to laying on their horns just as they passed our site. I've definitely slept better - but did manage to sleep some. Sharing our site was one guy traveling alone and another guy traveling with his two daughters (college age?) both seemed to be working at traveling a different section each summer to the end of seeing all of over time.

In the morning we set out early - probably packed up and back on the trail by 7 or so and made good time back to White's ferry for a late breakfast. This left us with 20 or so miles to get back to Bethesda. It was a gorgeous day and those really pretty stretches around Great Falls were all the more scenic with bright sunshine and blue skies.

Wildlife Highlights included: A gaggle of Canada Geese that scarcely moved as we passed them on the towpath, many large turtles swimming an sunning themselves in the canal and one small one that I nearly ran over on the towpath, several Great Blue Herons - including one on the towpath that allowed us to get quite close and then flew beside us on the canal, a dozen or so Turkey Vultures blocking the path that eventually shuffled out of the way once we rang our bike bells, a doe grazing at dawn in Harpers Ferry, and one large black snake that Steve tells me we nearly ran over in the towpath - I have no idea how I missed that one... More trip photos HERE, or as a SLIDESHOW, and organized on a MAP 150 miles over three days
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