Havard Life & Style

As we zoomed up the gentle hills of the Interstate between Washington and Pittsburgh, we passed forests, farms and urban sprawl, the kinds of vistas that usually lull you to sleep. But I was wide awake, overcome by a feeling that you usually don’t have at the start of a vacation: fear.

The plan was to make the return trip on bicycles, trading a cushy four-hour ride with all the comforts of a car — cup holders, FM radio, heat and air-conditioning — for a seven-day ride over gravel and dirt.

Three friends and I hadn’t chosen this route by happenstance. The bumpy, 335-mile-long ride draws cyclists from around the world because it is almost entirely car-free, weaving through terrain that forms a tour of American history.

The first 150 miles follow an old rail route, from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Md., called the Great Allegheny Passage. The ride then veers down the towpath of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, built more than 150 years ago, back to the Georgetown section of Washington, just below the last set of rapids on the Potomac River.

A virtually car-free trip of this length was not possible just a couple of years ago: The Allegheny Passage was finished in 2013 after more than 20 years of work. Now, except for a few tiny stretches on public highways, the only obstructions on this journey were hikers, people on horseback and, near the historic sites, occasional clusters of slow-moving Boy Scouts. (Trail distances are numbered from east to west, though most cyclists ride it in the other direction.)

Instead of worrying about traffic, travelers can soak up the agrarian patches of Pennsylvania that would have made Jefferson smile, dip into a few blue-collar former industrial strongholds, and explore the canal that is a vestige of a bygone transportation network. So with my companions, all cyclists but none of us avid “Lycra louts,” I set off on a journey in the fall, keeping diligent notes about what I saw.

One of my fellow cyclists drafted a son who had recently graduated from college to ride in a minivan with us, drop us off and drive back to Washington. After unloading our bikes at Point State Park, a green triangle where the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers come together to form the Ohio River just beyond the office towers of downtown Pittsburgh, we watched him drive away. It was like a reverse Cub Scout trip, in which the fathers were left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, or, in this case, a Monday afternoon in Pittsburgh.

We circled past the 30-story aluminum building that used to be the headquarters of Alcoa, and the massive pile of stone that is H. H. Richardson’s Allegheny Courthouse and Jail, and headed for the trail. Following it for the first mile is a bit tricky, but it runs reasonably well beyond that, through an amazing landscape that ranges from defunct 19th-century steel mills and other ancient factories to upscale riverside restaurant-and-condo complexes.

One area of steel mills is designated as an eagle-viewing area. A bit beyond, you are in the woods, glimpsing the river below and enjoying nature until the rumble of a train, unseen but close, reminds you that you are in the land of iron and steel, once the industrial heartland of the United States, in a swath that has partly reverted to nature.

The plan was to make it to Buena Vista, about 30 miles down the road, before sundown, but we’d spent too much time gawking at the architecture in the city. And we weren’t clear on just where the bed-and-breakfast was in relation to the trail. Luckily, Buena Vista is the kind of place where a group of middle-age cyclists waving wildly at passing motorists on a dark road attracts pity and, ultimately, assistance.

Any trail that follows a river is mostly flat, part of its attraction for trains, and later, bicycles. But any hotel or restaurant will be up a steep hill. We were cold and hungry when we reached our lodgings, the John Butler House. It was pure ’50s, from the rooms that were outfitted with so few outlets that you had to be committed to find one to charge your phone, to the restaurant with the cigarette machine in the entryway. We ordered meat and potatoes, meals worthy of Mad Men, and turned in for the night.

Sometime in the middle of the next day, we realized that we’d miscalculated and been quite optimistic when I made the hotel reservations. When we started paying attention to our pace rather than the scenery, we were chastened to discover that with fully loaded bikes riding on gravel or dirt, we were making only about 7 miles an hour, including time for stops. (On a paved road, without saddlebags, 10 miles an hour is pretty standard.) We resolved to get up early and not linger over breakfast, lest we run out of daylight short of our daily destination.

But the extra hours were all pleasant. The crunch of leaves and gravel under tires soothed us beneath a forest canopy that left tiger-tail stripes of sun and shade.

The woods were thick with tulip poplars, rhododendrons and wild cherry. Near mile marker 68 are the remnants of an old apple orchard, and the surviving trees attract wildlife. Occasionally, the path meandered toward rustic vistas, and while the Maryland side of the trip has natural beauty, on the Pennsylvania side, someone had the wisdom to build benches and particularly scenic rest stops near them. By the time we’d reached Ohiopyle, Pa., the leaves were turning, the morning air was crisp, and we’d climbed 500 feet over 77 miles, a gentle pace.

We were riding in the footsteps of Lt. Col. George Washington, the head of a regiment of militia from the Virginia colony, going out to do battle with the French, in 1754. An area now firmly in Pennsylvania (Colonial boundaries were not so certain) bears assorted markers showing his progress.

The path he took must have been challenging, considering the rough country not made smooth until the railroad came through decades later. This portion of trail is unusual among former railroad routes, and certainly canal routes, which follow rivers or coasts, all in the lowest available terrain. Instead, we were climbing across the Eastern Continental Divide, the line that divides the watersheds of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, which flow to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Chesapeake Bay, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Continental Divide is 126 miles east and 1,670 feet above Pittsburgh, and about 2,100 feet above Washington. That difference in elevation explains why the sparse traffic on the trail tends to be eastbound. We stopped at the top for photos and self-congratulations.

On the way down, we paused at the Mason-Dixon Line, a chunk of metal the width of a railroad track, laid diagonally across the trail.

We crossed the line into Maryland, and a few miles later saw a perceptible shift in the path. It went from beautified bike path to hardscrabble one.

The accommodations followed suit. We limped into town to a motel where we had to pick up the room keys in the bar. A sign outside the bar warned that the area was under video surveillance, and if the bartender saw any fighting, the tape would go straight to the Frostburg Police Department. “Buncha stupid rednecks,” the bartender told me, but she assured me that the next brawl wouldn’t come until Saturday night.

Fortunately for us, we checked out on Thursday, well ahead of fight night, on the way to Cumberland, Md., the end of the Great Allegheny Passage and the beginning of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. The route is essentially a tour of the engineering history of the United States. The company that built the canal, of which the aforementioned George Washington was a shareholder, intended it to cross the Allegheny Mountains and connect the Chesapeake to the Ohio. But it was overtaken by new technology, the railroad, and didn’t make it past this spot.

A museum provides a nice glimpse of the canal’s history, but we spent more time on the streets of Cumberland, a city that flourished in the industrial age and missed most of modern economic expansion, but also escaped the wrecking ball, offering stone facades and architectural flourishes that were well over a century old.

Beyond Cumberland is the Paw Paw tunnel, 3,118 feet long, built between 1836 and 1850, long before electrification. It remains unlit, but the lights on our handlebars illuminated the jagged rock of the tunnel wall and the dark waters of the canal that lined the hard-packed path.

We ended the day in Little Orleans, which is on the Maryland side of the Potomac River but has a West Virginia feel. At Bill’s Place, the only restaurant, where you can get any kind of food you want as long as it is fried, the walls and ceiling are decorated with a Confederate flag and a Wallace for President poster. Dollar bills were pinned to the ceiling, and there is a general store in the corner. It was a mash-up of late 1800s and mid-1900s, so it was no surprise to us that we landed between the two at the Town Hill Hotel Bed and Breakfast in Little Orleans, built on the National Pike in 1920, which claims to be the first motel in the state. If a Model T Ford pulled up for the night, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

We took our only significant detour off the canal, and diverted to Antietam, site of the single bloodiest day of fighting in American history and the first major battle fought on Union territory. Like many battlefields, it is now pockmarked with statues erected by aging Union veterans in the 1870s and 1880s, commemorating the gallantry of their military units. We opted for the National Park Service’s movie presentation, partly for the pleasure of sitting in upholstered chairs, but the movie was actually pretty good. The battle is a bit hard to imagine now, and much has changed; one of my companions pointed out that the Bloody Cornfield, of Union legend, is now planted in soybeans.

We left the trail that evening at a railroad bridge with a footpath, which leads across the Potomac to Harpers Ferry, W.Va., half of which is a national park commemorating John Brown’s attempt to trigger the civil war in October 1859. He was caught there by a detachment of United States Marines, led by Col. Robert E. Lee. The history is a bit hard to get to for a cyclist, as we had to carry our bikes up a circular staircase to reach the pedestrian path on the railroad bridge. But Harpers Ferry has a variety of hotels and restaurants. We picked the Town’s Inn, which offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, and is open year-round. The place is popular with hikers; the Appalachian Trail crosses through the town.

By Sunday, the weather turned hot and sticky.

As the temperature increased, so did the crowds in the last 60 miles back to Washington. We had plenty of distraction, though. White’s Ferry, the only one that still operates, is popular with people who raise horses, and you’ll spot lines of horse trailers waiting to cross on the ferry that pulls itself across the Potomac with a cable, the Jubal Early. (Yes, it’s south of the Mason-Dixon line and yes, he was on the Confederate side.)

We ended the trip at the Great Falls Tavern Visitors Center, about 14 miles north of the terminus in Georgetown, because it is close to my house.

We’d skipped from Washington’s footsteps to the Civil War to the industrial era. In the end, the trip was almost long enough to forget what the modern world looks like. It was long enough that the four of us ran out of bawdy jokes to tell. And long enough that for days afterward, I’d awaken in the morning and wonder how many miles — and how many years — I had to explore that day and was disappointed to realize that I was here in the present.

Visitors should plan their trip by the mile. The Great Allegheny Passage Trail Book is a good place to start, with advertisements that are almost as good as the text.

Hardly anybody wants to take this route round-trip by bicycle, but how do you do it one way? There are lots of options.

Amtrak’s Capitol Limited has direct service between Washington and Pittsburgh, but it takes almost eight hours and arrives in Pittsburgh at nearly midnight. (No matter which way you ride, you will see the Capitol Limited chugging through the woods across the Monongahela.) If you bring a full-size bike on Amtrak, you must box it and pay extra for the ride, and probably throw out the box.

A variety of companies will shuttle you and your bike between various points on the trail. Golden Triangle Bike Shop in Pittsburgh will rent one-way. We met two brothers who had flown to Pittsburgh from California and Alaska who chose that method; they said they’d arrived in Pittsburgh with all their gear in duffel bags, loaded their belongings into bicycle saddlebags and mailed the duffels to a hotel in Washington at the end of their route.

Some tour outfitters will drive your gear from hotel to hotel. Our trip was “self-supported,” without a support vehicle to drive our bags; we carried everything we thought we’d need in our saddlebags. If you make the trip that way, pay attention to which hotels have laundry machines for guests, and what hours they are open. You can bring lightweight clothes that you can rinse out in the sink, but like a soft bed, a washing machine looks incredibly attractive after a few days on the road.

At Town Hill Hotel Bed-and-Breakfast, in Little Orleans, Md., David Reusing, the proprietor, said he takes in about 500 riders a year. The B&B is an antique gem but six miles uphill off the trail; phone ahead and he will come down with a trailer to pick you up.

The town of Ohiopyle, Pa., with a beautiful state park, is heavily geared to the trail. You can drive there and rent bikes from several shops for a day trip, if the whole route seems too daunting. We stayed at the Yough Plaza motel, named for the Youghiogheny River that the trail follows at that point. I recommend the laundry room there.

If you’re new to long-distance cycling, especially on dirt roads, let me add a bit to your worries. It’s not your legs that will wear out first. It will be your hands and your bottom. Buy a good pair of bicycling gloves, with a padded section around the heel of the hand, and padded bicycle shorts. Carry as little gear as possible, but a little medicated talcum powder is well worth its weight.

Take two cellphones, with different service providers. Coverage is spotty, but in many places, AT&T worked where Verizon didn’t, or vice versa.

Binoculars are a good idea. Two spots on the trail are designated as eagle-viewing areas.

If you’re doing the whole trail and you are not a super-athlete, you will not want to carry enough clothing for the whole trip.

We packed a roll of toilet paper (which didn’t weigh much) and some hand sanitizer. There are portable toilets every few miles. The ones on the Pennsylvania side are nicer. There are also ample campsites, but that means hauling gear and forgoing soft beds and hot showers.