We’ll do a series of blog posts to describe the bike trip we just took in southwest Pennsylvania and Maryland the last week of August. So to start, a bit of background about the trail and what appealed to us about it. The Great Allegheny Passage (or GAP) is an off-road bike trail that goes from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cumberland, Maryland. It links directly after Cumberland with another off-road bike trail that goes to Washington, DC. The GAP follows a former train line, and the other trail follows an old canal towpath. We decided to do the GAP because it seemed doable at a leisurely enough pace in about 5 days, and it would give us a chance to try through cycling, or going on a trip on bikes and carrying all our gear with us.
We drove to Pittsburgh in about 7 hours, rented a bike for Miles, since his regular bike has tires that would probably have been too thin for the gravel surface, and headed off in the morning on the trail. First though, I have to say, Pittsburgh is such a cool city! We really liked it and would have liked to spent more time there. It’s really hilly around there and the city is built at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, and it’s known for the 446 bridges that cross these rivers. Highly recommend a trip to Pittsburgh! Here’s the car loaded up and a view up at one of the bridges that was located right above the bike shop we went to. The mist is from a misting pipe / sprinkler set up on the sidewalk to provide a bit of cool if one needed it. It was pretty hot there!
The GAP starts right from this area in downtown Pittsburgh (reminiscent of how Route 66 starts in the Chicago Loop), so we headed there Monday morning to start the trail. The first part of the trip leads out of town along the river, with a lot of the steel industry very much present along the way. This was the first of too many freight trains to count. And the first that made us jump out of our skin, the whistle was too loud! It was also the first of many times we commented along the way that little Liam and Rory would have loved this trip!
Chimney stacks near a shopping area. I think they were part of a former manufacturing facility but have been kept because of obvious reasons, they are extremely beautiful.
This shows the Braddock Locks and Dam. Another freight train!
One of several really long viaducts along the way.
Another big appeal to the trail for us was that it goes through little towns all along the way, which makes it more interesting but also means we didn’t have to carry food with us. We brought breakfast with us (more on that later!) but stopped at restaurants for lunch and dinner. The first day, we stopped at a lovely restaurant along the trail in West Newton. We had dinner there, continued another several miles to our campground, and set up camp for the night.
This sculpture in West Newton was made entirely of railroad ties. Impressive!
Fascinating bike trip! I had no idea that Pittsburgh had so many bridges!
The railroad spike man is really cool!
Looks like a great trip and excellent to have little towns to stop at for food rather than bringing it with you. And yes the trains would make the route very popular with Rory!
Looks like a great trip, we’ve a few old rail lines which are now cycle ways, and few more which could be converted yet!