Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Little Orleans, MD to Williamsport, MD
C&O Trail miles 140.9-99.4 (41.5 miles)
Highlights: Ruins, aqueducts, the Potomac, and Dam #5
Coffee at 7:00 and breakfast at 8:00 sharp. They run a pretty tight ship around here. The food was fantastic - bananas foster, tomato pie, and other goodies. The best breakfast on the trail! Town Hill B&B was worth the splurge.
Morning view from the Town Hill overlook
The shuttle back to the trail is at 9:00 a.m., take it or leave it. We took it. Occasionally guests bike down the hill to the trail, but the road is steep, rough, and has no shoulders – not biker friendly.
Yesterday, the towpath surface was hard-packed dirt and gravel, not as bad as I expected, but we were pretty beat up after 44 miles. Today offered an alternative. The nicely paved Western Maryland Rail-Trail runs parallel to the C&O from Little Orleans downstream for the next 27 miles. I hated leaving the C&O, but I love a smooth trail. We took the WMRT.
WMRT, high road - C&O, low road
Jana & Tom at the WMRT trailhead
The Western Maryland Rail-Trail is a couple of dozen feet higher than the C&O, so it offers a nice view from above, and we actually got a better look at a couple of aqueducts than we would have from below. I did miss the solitude of the C&O, however, since there were more people on the better groomed rail-trail.
Licking Creek Aqueduct
Mushrooms
The only chance to stop for lunch today was in Hancock, which we reached after just a couple of hours. We weren't hungry yet after the big breakfast, so we picked up deli sandwiches at the Sheetz convenience store for later.
We crossed back to the towpath at C&O mile 112, just before Fort Frederick. Soon we came to the Four Locks area (a series of four locks in quick successsion), the ruins of an old mill, rode by cliffs along the Potomac, and made a stop at Dam #5. The NPS had lowered the water level on the river for a couple of days to inspect Dams 4 and 5, so we had an especially good view. I'm no engineer, but I think it was leaking...
Jana at Four Locks
The remains of Charles Mill
Tom bikes along the Potomac
Leaky Dam #5
We left the trail for the day at mile 99.6 in Williamsport, just after crossing the very pretty Conococheague Aqueduct, which has recently been restored and rewatered. In years that are not 2020, visitors will be able to take a free boat ride over the aqueduct offered by the National Park Service.
Conococheague Aqueduct
C&O Canal over the Conococheague Creek
Lodging: Red Roof Inn, Williamsport, MD. The hotel is .9 mile from the towpath, up a moderate hill. The road has nice, wide shoulders, so it was manageable. We had a ground floor room and rolled our bikes right in there with us.
We walked across the street for spaghetti and a meatball sub at Marco's Pizza, picked up a six-pack, then returned to the hotel for the evening. Quite convenient.
Tom
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