Adventure Cycling Association

We’ll gather in the heart of Washington, DC, where we’ll meet our seasoned leader and have our first map meeting, dinner, and overnight. If you arrive early enough in the morning, you’ll have the opportunity to join us on a guided cycling tour of the National Mall.

Our ride through history begins by pedaling across the National Mall together and stopping to snap a group photo on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. After a few miles on the Capital Crescent Trail, with its dozens of joggers and cyclists, we’ll ride into deep hardwood forests and onto George Washington’s route west. Soon you and your new friends will ride past Great Falls Park, where the Potomac River gathers speed and force as it tumbles over a series of jagged boulders in the narrow Mather Gorge.

Today our group will ride a section of the C&O that runs along the Appalachian Trail. Later we’ll take leave of our bicycles and walk up the steps and over the bridge spanning the Potomac to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, the place where the Civil War began. You may choose to take a side trip and pedal through a rolling farmscape to Sharpsburg and the Antietam National Battlefield. The peaceful atmosphere at Antietam today belies its place as the bloodiest one-day battle in American history, on September 17, 1862.

After a tour of Fort Frederick State Park, which preserves a pre-Revolutionary War British outpost, we’ll have the option to hop off the dirt-surfaced C&O and onto the Western Maryland Trail, a 22-mile-long, hard-surface rail trail that parallels the C&O. Next up is the quaint little town of Hancock, where Weaver’s Restaurant & Bakery serves what are reputed to be some of the very best homemade pies east of the Mississippi.

Today we will pass through arguably the single most-impressive structure on the entire C&O Canal: the Paw Paw Tunnel. Excavated between 1836 and 1850, this cool, damp, and mysterious passage burrows through the hills for some 3,100 feet. Our final stretch of the C&O Canal will take us into the beautiful town of Cumberland, with its friendly citizens and classic downtown pedestrian mall.

First thing this morning, we’ll pedal onto the crushed limestone surface of the Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail to begin a long but gentle uphill that takes us into the Allegheny Mountains. Today you’ll surmount the Eastern Continental Divide, which marks the division point between the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico watersheds, as well as cross the famous Mason-Dixon Line, going from Maryland to the Keystone State of Pennsylvania. Today’s ride proffers the best long-distance views of the entire tour and also presents the opportunity to pedal through another impressive tunnel, the 3,300-foot-long Big Savage.

Early on we’ll spin through Ohiopyle State Park, with its beautiful bridges and waterfalls, perhaps pausing to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s nearby architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater. There’s also a wealth of terrific hiking trails in the state park in case you’d like to get off the bike for awhile and stretch a new set of muscles. For much of the day, our group will follow the Youghiogheny (YOCK-uh-gay-nee), known as the whitewater mecca of the east.

We’ll pedal through the old mining towns of Dawson and Whitsett and then ride out of the Allegheny Mountains toward McKeesport, where the Youghiogheny and Monongahela Rivers converge. We’ll finish the ride at the Point in Pittsburgh, where we will spend the night and celebrate our achievements with a hearty dinner.

After we convene, it’s time to enjoy a shuttle back to our starting point in Washington. True, the trip may be over, but the memories of the traffic-free pathways you pedaled through one of the most historically important regions of America will stay with you for years to come.