Today we woke up at about 7 AM. We had mostly slept well, but Natalie had been awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. We woke up to heavy fog and a rainstorm inside our tent. With this much humidity, the tent becomes as wet inside as it is outside. It made us miss our REI tent that has a separate rain fly. For this trip, we brought a very lightweight, single-piece tent with no rain fly. We like it because it is small and light. If you cut the end off of a 2-liter bottle, it could fit inside of it.

The fog baked off quickly. We cooked breakfast and didn’t enjoy the freeze-dried scrambled eggs as much as we enjoyed the freeze-dried taco soup. We are learning… It took us a bit of time to break camp, but we were on the trail by 9:30.

The trail conditions up to PawPaw Tunnel were good. The Paw Paw Tunnel is about a half mile long, with a relatively narrow bike trail on one side and a big drop-off into the canal. Luckily, there is a fence designed to keep you from going over the ledge, although Natalie had some concern about its ability to hold us with a heavy bike. The tunnel trail is very bumpy with lots of weird angles in the surface. It’s like it’s filled with tree roots, even though it isn’t. This was Natalie’s least favorite part of the ride. Perhaps we’ll walk the tunnel on our return trip, as riding it constantly gave her the feeling that we were going into the drink.

After the tunnel, the trail conditions got worse. We were on double track, with grass down the middle. There were quite a few mud puddles, and we’ve learned through hard experience that they can tip us over if I try to turn while in one. Our bike is significantly harder to balance than a normal bike. We generally don’t feel it, but we did on a trail like that.

After about an hour, we got to a better section of the trail. We were riding on it when we noticed trail work happening. As we came up to a dump truck and a trail-making machine, they worked hard to get out of our way. One gentleman even grabbed some clippers and started clipping the tree branches where we’d have to go around his machinery. They were so polite. We were so grateful they didn’t close the trail while they were working on it. After we got past them, the trail was in pristine condition. Some of the best of the entire ride. It was newly compacted crushed gravel.

After another hour or two, we merged with the Western Maryland Rail Trail. Now we were on pavement for about 20 miles. This gave us a few extra miles per hour. We stopped in Hancock at a diner named Buddy Lou’s. It was a bit eclectic, but it gave us an excuse to rest and some good nutrition. We had an especially friendly and helpful server.

As we approached tonight’s stay, we hit a really hard trail detour for construction. It involved a couple of flights of stairs, and then some other rough, steep uphill portions that required us to move carefully and slowly. To get up the stairs, we had to unload our bike and carry the panniers to the top, then push our bike up as hard as we could. It felt like a big accomplishment!

Throughout the day, we leapfrogged two gravel bikers. They were faster than we were, but we rested less. We also shared some water with a random biker on the trail; tonight, as we checked into our bed-and-breakfast, we found out he was the other guest sharing our house—small world.

Our bed-and-breakfast tonight is just right, comfy and practical. We were grateful it had a garage to store a bike and a laundry room in the basement. We were starting to smell…

We walked to the Dollar General grocery store to buy a few snacks and juice (not hungry enough for another meal, and not many other options around for something light). I made my common mistake of buying a gallon and a half of fruit juice, as my eyes were bigger than my stomach.

Today was a warmer, very sunny day on a beautiful trail. It was cool to see how Mother Nature is slowly taking over the canal. The Potomac River is beautiful.

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