John's Journal

DC to Pittsburgh, Day 2 (59 miles)
We left the hostel around 9 AM after a breakfast of bagels with peanut butter. Before starting our serious mileage for the day, we carried our bikes up a spiral staircase on the footbridge to the historic section of Harpers Ferry. We locked our bikes to a tree and walked around the town, visited the museums, hiked up the hill to the town graveyard, and had lunch at a cafe.

Climbing up the stairs to Harpers Ferry.

The foot and train bridge to Harpers Ferry. No cars this way!

The historic Harpers Ferry, WV.

Shops in Harpers Ferry.

The Harpers Ferry cemetery. Most of the graves are for people who died around the time of the civil war.

The storms last night had soaked the trail, so even though the day was beautiful and sunny, we were covered in mud before too long.

Miles 86 - 88 on the canal were built along a ledge on the base of a cliff which has since been destroyed. Hence there's a short detour on scenic western Maryland farm roads -- actually good change of pace, plus we got to see some cows.

Hello cows!

Getting back on to the trail.

We rode pretty hard today, stopping in Williamsport, MD where we hoped to find a grocery store. We made it into town around 5pm, but the store was a bit pathetic, having no fresh fruits or vegetables, so we decided to push on to our campsite. The C&O towpath has free hiker/biker campsites every 5 to 10 miles, which typically consist of a space for tents, a fire ring, a water well with a pump, and a chemical toilet. We wanted to camp around milepost 110 at the North Mountain hiker/biker site, but there were these two scruffy looking guys there drinking and sitting on a pile of blankets. That wouldn't be a problem, except that I also noticed that one of the guys was cleaning a foot-long knife. Rather than worrying about getting shanked by some drunks in the middle of the night, we moved on to another site a mile up the trail, the much nicer McCoys Ferry Recreation Area, which is also open to car campers. Somehow when you're out riding your bike in the woods all day, you don't mind having a few other (non crazy) people around at night. This site was quite pleasant and right next to the river. The fee was $10 per car, which we had zero of.

I cooked my first meal on my new alcohol burning stove, basmati rice with indian potato and chickpea curry from a sealed pouch I had been carrying.

Setting up camp. My first self-contained camping night, so I'm still a bit disorganized.

Ready to sleep.

I'm feeling a bit down this evening. Our inability to find a grocery store in Williamsport, our encounter with the weird guys at the last campsite, plus the toil of two consecutive 60-mile days give me doubts about my ability to complete my dream tour of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. It also got very cold tonight, with temperatures dropping into the low 30s, so I didn't sleep that well.

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