The last of my blackened toenails from our hike in Italy fell off about 4 days before we started our latest vacation/adventure - biking the C & O Canal towpath. That seemed very Asian – representing the balance and symmetry of life or something like that. As for vacation/adventures, discovering a new ice cream parlor on vacation is a big enough adventure for me. Paul, however, sees the words “vacation” and “adventure” as synonyms and neither has anything to do with ice cream cones.
I actually was the one who suggested this particular vacation/adventure. We had biked some sections of the towpath in the past and I thought it would be nice to revisit it for a week. Conceived by Washington, promoted by Jefferson and opened in the 1830’s, the C & O Canal was supposed to provide a waterway to transport goods 
between the Washington, D.C. area and the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. It reached Cumberland, Maryland 185 miles from Washington before it stalled out, bankrupt and upstaged by the railroads. In the 1950’s, Supreme Court Justice Douglas saved the remains of the canal from becoming a paved road, creating our longest and narrowest National Park. The towpath, once used by the mules pulling boats along the canal, is now a packed-dirt and gravel path for walking and biking that passes classic old canal and railroad towns. 
We attached a little trailer named Bob to the back of the bike; Bob holds a good sized duffle bag of stuff. The duffle, however, turned out to be shockingly heavy when we loaded it up for the first time. While waiting out a thunderstorm, we thought about what to leave behind. When the weather cleared, I ditched one biking outfit, extra shorts, my writing tablet and a pair of shoes. I chose between a bottle of wine and liquid soap (not a hard choice) and gave up half a package of fig bars and 
half my Kashi bars – at least they weren’t Oreos. We decided to share deodorant and Paul took out some of his stuff. When I was packing his 5-pound shoes, he asked me three times if I really needed my 2 ounce bottle of make-up and my LITTLE containers of special shampoo, conditioner and gel. (YES! YES! and YES!) I offered to compare the total weight of his stuff against mine but we didn’t have a scale. By the end of the trip, I had used every last sock and he still had a bag of unused clothes. HA!
A few days before we were to leave, I wondered if we had made a bad choice with all this year’s rain and flooding. In a canal website blog posting, some guy complained that the rocky, bumpy, muddy trail limited his speed to about 5 miles an hour, gave him flat tires and eventually caused him to bail out. He also ran out of water because he thought the Park Service water pump was unsafe since there was a dead deer lying in the water nearby. (“A First Class Weenie!” according to Paul.) My
friend Jean said her butcher’s son found dead fish everywhere along the canal and one gigantic one (I visualized Moby Dick) in the middle of the towpath. But by then we were already committed.As usual, my worries were unnecessary. By the time we started our trip, 
the flood waters had receded, most parts of the trail had been repaired and rolled smooth and we didn’t see a dead fish anywhere. There were some bumps, a few limbs across the trail and enough muddy spots to leave my legs and Paul’s yellow biking shirt looking like cheetah wannabees but that didn’t hold us back. We had peaceful, pleasant rides each day past scenic dams, locks, and lock houses often with the canal on one side and the Potomac River on the other. The canal itself ranged from placid water to murky swamp to grass and trees; while the Potomac
was wide and smooth in some areas and dotted with rocks and rapids in others. Our wildlife sightings included a blacksnake, red fox, turtles, woodchucks, an eagle, egrets and herons, a weasel and many deer which are much cuter when they’re eating something besides Paul’s perennials. It was great biking, even the one day when we rode about 75 miles without so much as one square of chocolate.
the flood waters had receded, most parts of the trail had been repaired and rolled smooth and we didn’t see a dead fish anywhere. There were some bumps, a few limbs across the trail and enough muddy spots to leave my legs and Paul’s yellow biking shirt looking like cheetah wannabees but that didn’t hold us back. We had peaceful, pleasant rides each day past scenic dams, locks, and lock houses often with the canal on one side and the Potomac River on the other. The canal itself ranged from placid water to murky swamp to grass and trees; while the Potomac
was wide and smooth in some areas and dotted with rocks and rapids in others. Our wildlife sightings included a blacksnake, red fox, turtles, woodchucks, an eagle, egrets and herons, a weasel and many deer which are much cuter when they’re eating something besides Paul’s perennials. It was great biking, even the one day when we rode about 75 miles without so much as one square of chocolate.
We spent our nights in beautiful, out-of-the –way places including Georges Mill Farm (left) which has been in the same family for nine generations and the Jacob Rohrbach Inn, a large, comfortable house built in 1804 and used during the Civil War as a field hospital (photo with paragraph 4.) We also stayed in two of the old lock houses – the one was furnished in a 1950’s style complete with an Ike and Mamie Eisenhower commemorative plate while the other, our favorite, transported us back to the 1830’s, offering tranquility, a vintage kitchen and a lovely front porch view in place of air conditioning (photos paragraph 5.)
A big advantage of biking between 30 and 70 miles every day is that you can devour things like berry bread pudding and lemon pancakes and croissant omelets for breakfast. You can put down a three-inch thick deli sub for lunch. You can sample crab cakes everywhere – in Maryland, crab cakes are like pastrami in New York or brats in Milwaukee or chili in Cincinnati. You can enjoy a cone at Nutter’s Ice Cream Store; but you should know that “small” means two large scoops and, if you order Java Chunk, you’d better have a good book with you.
If you’re Paul, you can even flirt with the idea of eating The Monument at Captain Bender’s in Sharpsburg – “Three 8 ounce Black Angus burger patties stacked high on a Kaiser roll with lettuce and tomato. Layered with chili, cheese, hot sauce, fried pickles, onion rings and spicy dipping sauce. Served with a dill pickle spear and cheese fries topped with bacon and sour cream.” It costs $28.24, but if you eat the
whole thing, it’s free. Paul considered it until our friendly bartender/waiter warned him that most people, who plow through the burger, hit the wall when it comes to the fries. You could also go on a bender with one of Captain Bender’s signature drinks like Canal Water (Melon Liquor, pineapple juice and Sprite) or a Duck Shot (a duck decoy filled with 12 ounces of beer and a shot of amaretto.)
whole thing, it’s free. Paul considered it until our friendly bartender/waiter warned him that most people, who plow through the burger, hit the wall when it comes to the fries. You could also go on a bender with one of Captain Bender’s signature drinks like Canal Water (Melon Liquor, pineapple juice and Sprite) or a Duck Shot (a duck decoy filled with 12 ounces of beer and a shot of amaretto.)
Our luck with the weather lasted all week – the bike was in the van, our massive bag of dirty clothes was stowed away, Paul was in the shower and I was relaxing on the porch of the 1828 Trail Inn in Hancock, Maryland when it started to rain. I had hoped the benefits of biking 300 miles in a week might include sculpted, rock-hard calves or a few less pounds in my bike shorts or no more Saggy Baggy Elephant staring at me when I do leg lifts. That part didn’t work out. After all this was a week-long bike trip, not a miracle makeover; and I wasn’t exactly living on non-fat yogurt and birdseed. Still it was a wonderful vacation and a wonderful adventure. We’ve started thinking about other long trips with just us, the bike and Bob.
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