The buzzword this summer is stay-cation, a vacation that involves little or no long-distance travel, seeing the sights in one’s own backyard.  Combine that notion with a bike ride and you might catch yourself tickling your nose with your thumb as you pedal past those gas stations.  Any recent trip to fill up, with its accompanying pump palpitations as that number after the dollar sign keeps getting bigger and bigger, might convince you to stick around.

While bicycling as a form of transportation is practically out of the question in most of the United States, there are many places where cycling can be enjoyed recreationally.  One of the best places is the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Towpath.  The C&O Canal stretches from Georgetown in Washington D.C. northwest to Cumberland, MD for 184 and 1/2 miles.  It is possible to then ride the Great Allegheny Passage from Cumberland to just outside Pittsburgh, another 132 milesand all of this without having to share the road with a motor of any sort.  Of course the trip can be done in reverse and, for the truly adventurous, out and back all the way.  But, you don’t have to cycle the whole thing.

The C&O Canal and towpath were built between 1828 and 1850 as a means to ferry goods from east to west.  For all practical purposes, in 1800, the western edge of non-native America was Pittsburgh, or Charlottesville.  Large flat boats were filled with cargo and pulled up the canal by mules walking along the towpath.  There were 74 locks to accommodate the 605-foot difference in elevation between Georgetown to Cumberland and many of them survive to this day.  Shortly after its completion, the canal was displaced as the favored means of freight transportation by the railroad.  Only a small section of the canal is still in operating condition, used only for sightseeing, but the entire towpath remains in use as a recreational hiking and biking path.  

I recently loaded the mini-van with my three grown children and our four bikes and drove from southeastern Virginia to Great Falls, mile 14 on the towpath.  Somewhere an oil executive is smirking and tickling his nose.  Our trip used one $60 tank of gas.  I could not find decent parking in D.C. (price, location, safety) so adjusted our starting point to Great Falls.  The National Park at Great Falls closes each night but the very large parking lot is regularly patrolled.  The entrance fee is $5 per carload, and any National Park pass will get the whole car in.  There are many other possible parking/starting points along the path, but many do not offer the safety and convenience of Great Falls, especially for long-term parking near the southern end.

I put a rack and a set of panniers on all four bikes.  Panniers are like saddlebags that clip onto the racks, holding them just far enough out from the pedaling mechanism.  The racks were $20-$30 each and the panniers were $110-$140.  I got the biggest size for myself and the next smallest for the kids.  The kid’s panniers had more side pockets but mine could hold a ton.  I could easily put my life for a week in those things, as long as I wasn’t camping.

We headed northwest and the weather was perfect.  But, as we rode, the sky in front of us darkened and it must have rained hard.  We got a couple of sprinkles from that storm, but from mile 25 to 45, we waded through a sea of mud.  It took us eight hours to cycle the 45 miles from Great Falls to Harper’s Ferry.  Finding the hostel was incredibly difficult.  Signs are not permitted on the towpath so directions can be challenging.  

When we arrived at the Harper’s Ferry Family Hostel in Knoxville, MD, it was late.  We walked to a restaurant up the hill in our muddy clothes and ate dinner.  After dinner, we showered and retired to one of two family rooms at the hostel.  The four of us stayed the night for $60.  This hostel is a popular stop for hikers along the Appalachian Trail; that trail shares a few miles with the towpath just south of Harper’s Ferry.  It has a male dorm, a female dorm, and two family rooms.  Practically unlimited camping is available in the huge yard.  The kitchen is massive and everyone treats it like home.  I was the first one up on the second morning, so I made the coffee.  I’ll bet the owner, Carol Wilkins, answers 500 questions a day; I know I asked her at least 50, and she always knew the answer.

http://www.hihostels.com/dba/hostels-HI---Harpers-Ferry--Knoxville-MD--060075.en.htm

Expensive hotels and bed and breakfast establishments are also available along the towpath with varying degrees of accessibility and amenities.  Some owners offer shuttle services because they can be difficult to find and riders must share the road with fast moving internal combustion engines to get there. 

Many people choose to camp while riding the trail.  There are a number of large, established campgrounds along the way, and the National Park Service provides hiker/biker campsites every four or five miles throughout most of the towpath.  They are very primitive.  There is a fire ring, picnic table, chemical toilet and water pump that, after two minutes of pumping, pulls up non-potable water from deep wells.

The next day, we left the bikes at the hostel and walked to Harper’s Ferry.  It was a two-mile walk to a railroad trestle with a spiral staircase and a narrow pedestrian crossing beside the elevated tracks.  Harper’s Ferry is a beautiful, small, very hilly, old town.  It was good to have a day off the bikes and walk around.  That night, it rained cats and dogs at the hostel and I braced myself for the next day’s inevitable ride through even deeper mud than our ride northwest.  Amazingly, the trail was mostly dry, with only three or four places where it was impossible to ride around a puddle.

We made it back, with a stop for lunch at White’s Ferry, in just six hours.  It was a hot day, but all the while we were biking, we felt comfortable.  Almost the entire towpath is shaded.  On the way up, the Potomac is on the left and for some of the way, the canal is on the right.  The water seemed to keep the air cooler.  Around Great Falls and a bit further northwest, the trail is about eight feet wide and mostly crushed stone.  A few miles up river the path changes into two, parallel, single-track lanes.  Don’t get caught with your head down in the wrong lane.

I saw several families with very young children cycling on the towpath.  They were probably only cycling a couple hundred yards out and back from a parking lot.  Forty-five miles, especially our leg up the towpath through the mud, was a pretty grueling trek.  Younger children would have difficulty with that kind of distance.  Only one person in our party did not prepare for the rigors of such a long ride and for that, a price was paid.
Do not attempt distances of 30 miles or more per day without first getting in good shape.

When we got back to the parking lot, we kept pedaling another hundred yards and went to see Great Falls.  I cannot believe the dozens of times I have driven by this spot on my way around D.C. and I had never seen Great Falls.  It is a spectacular visual treasure.

Some may argue that using one tank of gas violates the staycation rule.  Unfortunately, it’s still the only way to get around.  We’ve used several more fill-ups seeing many other sights here in our own backyard.  My wife and I have twice been to Virginia Beach to play in the waves.  We regularly ride the Battlefield Roads at Yorktown, jumping over to ride the trails in Newport News Park as well.  And there is so much more:  Water Country, Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, Ansel Adams at the Chrysler, all the free concerts and festivals, the Tides.  No wonder everyone else seems to want to come here.  It turns out that the grass on this side of the fence is greener than I thought it.

If you ride:  

•	Park safely, don’t park at unpatrolled lots.
•	Get good equipment, especially a comfortable seat.  I wore padded cycle shorts, too.
•	Don’t ride alone.  Many sections of the towpath are very far removed from civilization, so be careful.  There are sections without cell phone service.  

Bring:

•	First Aid kit.
•	Bike tool kit, pump and spare inner tubes.
•	Water!  Tons of water.  It will be most of the weight.  Replenishing is possible throughout the ride, but don’t start out with less than four liters per rider.
•	Food.  There are not many places to stop.
•	Money.  Bring lots if your kids are ages 18-24.  Did I used to eat like that? 

The most helpful website, by far, for planning this trip was:

http://bikewashington.org/canal/

And the National Park Service website has more information:

http://www.nps.gov/choh/