Today would start with a decent downhill; not steep by California standards, but a little steeper than the climb we did from Pittsburgh.
I decided to start out in the back of the pack so I could take pictures and ride with more people. Beverly and Nancy both got going early. I got a bit delayed getting out of the hotel, so was 20 minutes behind the last rider out. I was moving pretty fast, and did some calcs on how long it takes to make up 20 minutes given that rider A is moving 15MPH and rider B is moving 18 MPH. I figured I’d catch some people before the first water stop at the end of the GAP trail, and I did run into Andrew and Andy.
Mile zero for the GAP trail is in Cumberland, and that’s where the water stop was. For flavor, there was a steam locomotive getting ready to roll.
We’d heard that the C&O wasn’t as well developed as the GAP Trail, but this portion was more or less the same crushed gravel that we’d been riding. This high up, the canal is mostly dry with occasional ponds with turtles and lily pads. We were riding with some of our Climate Ride friends, taking pictures and chatting.
The lunch stop was just before the Paw Paw Tunnel, which is notable because the tunnel is for the canal. It’s about a half-mile long, unlit, with a fairly bumpy, unpaved bike/pedestrian walkway. The signs say to walk your bike but of course I didn’t. I had a tiny crappy headlight, which was enough to keep the trail from being totally blacked out but not really enough to see much. The ride was definitely a bit on the white knuckle side.
On the other side, the trail surface was more broken up, with bigger gravel rocks. I still made good time, and caught up with a few more riding colleagues. A quick stop at the last water stop, and onto the next segment of C&O.
A few klicks down the trail, the RWGPS track routed us onto a paved rail-trail on the other side of the canal. We had been told that we could stay on the C&O trail if we preferred dirt; both trails went to our destination. But we were warned by signs about a “NPS emergency conditions.”
Well, there are certainly emergency conditions for the National Parks Service here in 2025. Given our experience yesterday with the unnecessarily closed trail, I decided to stick with the dirt route. How bad could it be?
Most of it turned out to be fine, but there was a bridge that had been condemned by structural engineers. Faced with the choice of walking across a condemned bridge, or backtracking 2+ miles, I of course decided to walk the bridge. I made it.
This section of the trail had hike/bike campgrounds along the river which were beautiful; it would be great to bikepack this section. The trail surface was a lot rougher than most of what we’d ridden, so took some more energy, but was also more fun. The trail closure meant there were no people around; I saw a red-headed woodpecker and a groundhog on the trail.
The remnants of the canal really give off Mayan ruin vibes.
The hotel was again a climb up from the trail, gladly not as much as yesterday. The place was rustic, with a bit of charm, managed by very friendly women from Haiti. They had a hose out on the lawn which prompted us to have a group bike wash; three days of gravel gets everything pretty dusty.
I hadn’t realized that one of the riders on the trip, Mike Tidwell, was our speaker for tonight. Mike’s the founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the author of a number of books, including the just-published “The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue,” a story on community grief from the loss of heritage trees on his residential street due to multiple effects of climate change. He told his story over dinner.
He was great, and it turns out that when we got home Nancy was able to dig up a signed copy of his first book, The Ponds of Kalambayi, which is about his experiences in the Peace Corps in Zaire. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers are a breed apart.
We later got the opportunity to support Mike once we arrived in DC. He led a press conference to kick off Sun Day, a new annual event celebrating the rise of renewable power. Including demonstrating one of the still-functioning solar hot water panels installed on the White House by Jimmy Carter. Such a delayed opportunity, but the industry is finally getting there.