If you are interested in organzied group tours of places along the C&O Canal, you can check out Get Out and Go Tours for a selection of offerings. It looks to be a fully-supported maximum pampering sort of tour. I’m sure there’ll be some challenge out on the trail, but certainly no battling clouds of thirsty mosquitoes by an evening campfire after a meal of pemmican and Zone bars.
Each tour originates from Washington DC and, according to their own website, includes
Fitness oriented distance selection, with carefully identified options to shorten the day without missing key sights, for those who wish.
Tour meals, including several buffet dinners and breakfasts, pre-determined snack, drink, and picnic style lunch stops.
Pleasant hotel accommodations each night (double occupancy).
Gear shuttle from hotel-to-hotel, with day bag, mechanical, and sag support at trail access points and at lunch.
Extensive map and historical cue booklet for each participant, with daily preview of what’s to come.
Chartered transport from Washington before the tour, or to Washington after the tour, for all point-to-point tours.
Bike transport.
If you don’t have a favorite bike to bring, you can always rent one. See their FAQ’s here.
It’s just about fall and peak hiking time. True, there’s no fall colors here like there is in New England and Canada (something about cool nights) but the ground is dry and the temperatures cool. I thought I’d do a rundown on alot of the places I like to hike around Montgomery County (aside from the canal). Personally, I think the canal is better for bicycling. The trails that follow are my recommendations for hiking. Click on the park name for the map. Many of the maps were taken from MontgomeryParks.org
Seneca Greenway
The Seneca greenway is a 25 mile trail that follows the course of Seneca Creek from the C&O near Riley’s Lock to Damascus. There are three basic parts:
Lower Seneca Greenway (Riley’s Lock to Route 355)
Upper Seneca Greenway (Route 355 to Magruder Branch Trail)
Magruder Branch Trail
The first section (Lower Greenway) is maintained by the State of MD and they have a very restictive policy concerning its use which is a shame really. The second section is maintained by Montgomery County and you can ride a mountain bike all over it. The third section is actually not part of the Greenway but it does connect to the trails throughout Damascus Recreational Park. The Park is still trying to purchase the land to make a connector to Patuxtent River State Park.
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The C&O Canal National Historical Park is offering a free program to all the members of the Washington DC community. It is called “Your Towpath to Healthy Living.” The benefits of this program are.
1) Enjoying the scenery and history of the C&O Canal
2) Becoming healthier and more physically fit.
3) Sending time with friends and coworkers and
meeting new people in the community by walking as
a team.
We will be kicking off this program on Friday September the 14th at the C&O Canal Georgetown Visitor Center from 12pm-2pm. Food, Motivational guest speakers, and Ranger lead walks will be offered. Come and join us. The visitor center is located at 1057 Thomas Jefferson Street NW, Washington, DC.
If anyone in the Washington DC community, friends,family, and coworkers are interested in this program see the attachment and or email me John Donoghue johnnyd07716@yahoo.com/john_donoghue@nps.gov or call me at 240-375-4857.
A new C & O Canal website is now up, BikeCandO.com. It is especially useful for planning bicycle trips. The Webmaster is Ray Scott. Visit it now and whenever you are thinking about your next trip.
Completed the 260 mile ride in 8 days with 5 Scouts and 3 adults (one who just turned 19).
Day One: Biked from Ohiopyle to Rockwood. Ate lunch in Ohiopyle, supper in Rockwood at the Opera House and camped at Husky Haven (wanted around $120 to pitch 6 tents).
Day Two: Breakfast at a convenience store in Rockwood, lunch at Frostburg at Lynn’s Place and supper in Cumberland. Camped at Evitt’s Creek H/B site. (more…)
The 6th Annual Greenway Sojourn, June 23–30, 2007, will lead 500 cyclists on the ride of their lives on the longest multi-purpose trail in the country. After 20 years of trail building, the Great Allegheny Passage in southwestern Pennsylvania and western Maryland is now linked to the popular C & O Canal Towpath in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Creating 335 miles of continuous trail connecting suburban Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., together these trails make up the spine of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail.
Join friendly fellow riders on this trek from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh—on the country’s most popular canal towpath and the Northeast’s premier rail-trail. The 335-mile tour ends in Pittsburgh. The scenic 185-mile C & O Canal Towpath features many surviving locks, lock houses and aqueducts. At its terminus in Cumberland, Md., the ride will continue on the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage, a gently graded, mostly wilderness trail. Expect friendly rural towns, as well as spectacular mountain vistas, views of the rushing Youghiogheny River and the dramatic engineering of bridges, tunnels and viaducts. This is your chance to pedal over the Eastern Continental Divide without doing a killer climb!
Get all the details from http://www.railstotrails.org/wherewework/northeast/events/Sojourn/index.html
This was my third year in a row to offer a bike through trip of the canal. Again, I chose the first weekend that my Scouts were out of school and this year the trip was to start on Sunday, June 11.
Prior to the trip, we had a shake down bike trip of 22 miles on a local trail near our town. Boys who were going on the trip were to report with fully equipped bikes as if they were leaving for the canal that day. For the most part, everything was in order. I recommended extra water containers and bike tools to some of the parents but the boys had the basics covered. (more…)
I grew up in Canada and hiked there often. When I came to Maryland, I started hiking about this time of year (early summer) and was often amused by these curious insects that had eight legs and crawled slowly. My amusement turned to disgust when one day I had to pick one out of my head. No, not funny at all. It turned out to be only a dog tick, not a deer tick, the species that carries lyme disease but I still didn’t like anything that sucks blood, especially my blood! (more…)
In Harper’s Ferry, you can pick up the Maryland Heights trail along the canal between locks 33 & 34. There are two main trails: one is the Overlook Cliff Trail (with a red blaze) which follows the cliffs; the other is the Stone Fort Trail (with a blue blaze) which goes up into the mountain where you can view the ruins of a civil war era fort. The main attraction of the red trail is, at the end, you get this overlook of the city of Harper’s Ferry. You can clearly see both the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meeting and many of the buildings in the town. Parking is tight so be sure to get there early.
After nearly a century of operations at Swain’s Lock on the C&O Canal, the Swain family decided to close its concession stand and boat rentals.
Swain said his father began running the family’s business of recreation and concessions out of the lockhouse in the 1930s — some 30 years after the family moved in at mile 16.6. Although his official day job was with the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, he also spent time taking canal visitors on guided hikes, fishing trips and boat rides.
Deciding to shut down the lockhouse’s boat and bicycle rentals and concession stand was a ‘‘tremendously difficult decision,” Swain said. ‘‘I have these fears that spirits of my ancestors are going to come back and haunt me for years on this.”
For the full story, see 17 May 2006 story in the Montgomery County Gazette