Sunday

I have been trying to keep up with the blogs - but honestly, most of the towns don't even have cell coverage, let alone internet. So, I have to squish them all in when I can.
On Sunday, we woke up pretty late (and by we, I mean me :) so we didn't get biking until about 11-ish (again). However, the first 15 miles of the journey were all down hill (yesss!). It was pretty nice, we made GREAT time. Those 15 miles took us into the big town of Cumberland - much bigger than we had been in yet. We stopped at a local bike shop and then ate at The Crabby Pig - great food!
Cumberland is actually the end of the Great Allegheny Passage. After Cumberland starts the C & O Canal, which unlike the GAP, is a pretty straight trail. So, relatively easy - or so we thought. Dad's bike did great - but the trail was just not made for the Trike (three wheeled bike). This trail is a bit rougher than the other one - it has more debris laying in the way and small potholes. So, it was pretty easy for Dad's bike to manuever around whatever was laying in the road, but for mine it was difficult and slowed us down. However, the trail is AMAZING!!! We saw so much wildlife it was crazy! There is a river to the right of the trail and the canal to the left. It was really like biking through a fairyland - beautiful Bluebell flowers lined each side of the trail and went as far as the eye could see. The canal was lined with trees that seemed to reach the sky and much of the time the only thing that could be heard, was the low hum of tree frogs. It seemed like you were in another world - we were so far from any civilization. We saw hundreds of turtles sunning on logs in the water, we got about 8 feet from a beaver and took a bunch of pictures of deer.



Although this trail is much harder than the last, it is by far the more beautiful. Unfortunately, because of the terrain, there is just no way that we will make it to DC (sniff....). That was my goal when we first began, but after being on the C & O, we decided to take our time since there are so many beautiful things we don't want to miss.
That night we ended up reaching Paw Paw - yes, a town, where we stayed at Grandma's House - actual name (again, we had to use our headlamps, we got stuck in the dark). This was a very small town, but a cute little house where we rested our heads for the night.