The Gap: Part 2

After the first day of our trip, we really broke free of the urban areas around Pittsburgh and got to enjoy some really beautiful scenery.  The GAP trail goes through the Allegheny mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, but the nice thing is that because the bike trail is an old train line, the grade is very gentle, typically no more than 2%.  That being said, our second day was our longest cycle, a little over 40 miles, and it was basically all uphill, and after 40 miles, 2% grade starts to feel pretty tough!

That said we got to enjoy some amazing scenery:

We also started crossing some of the more impressive tunnels and viaducts along the GAP route:

There were also lots of reminders along the way of how far we had come and how far we had to go!

On the third night we stopped off in Rockford, which had a lovely mural as you entered town.

The moto on the mural reads “Building a future on a proud past” and it was striking to see how enthusiastically all the communities we encountered along the way had embraced the bicycle trail as a means of encouraging tourism into the area, attracting visitors from the big towns of Pittsburgh and DC.  All of the towns we were going through used to be the industrial heartland of America, the type featured in movies like the Deerhunter, and all had experienced huge job losses over the previous three decades.  While we were definitely going through Trump heartland (we saw quiet a few yardsigns) what was most striking was how these communities had banded together (without any central oversight) to create this amazing bicycle trail, reinventing themselves around tourism versus mining and steel, and being incredibly welcoming, with a lot of private homes leaving out cooler boxes of iced water for folks cycling the trails.  It was inspiring to see how most people were figuring out how to make the best of what they had, versus looking for scapegoats at home and abroad.

On a very different topic, you’re all probably wondering what we did for food.  While we were camping, the trail typically went through a small village or town every 10 miles, so lunch and dinner were usually eaten in a local diner or restaurant.  Most towns has one pizza place and one burger place and they were all really good.  But for breakfast, we had to fend for ourselves, so after much thought before our trip, we settled on the following solution:

Above is a ziploc bag full of oatmeal, raisins and nut, plus a half cup of powered milk.  We travelled with four of these bags.  Every night we’d take one a fill it with four cups of water, and by morning we’d have a lovely bag of muesli!

For coffee, (at this point in the blog our Australian readers may want to brace themselves for some controversial content), we had four ziploc bags, each with a cheesecloth filled with one cup of ground coffee – essentially creating a “coffee-bag”.  We’d fill one of these ziploc bags every night with three cups of water, and by morning, we’d have a bag full of delicious (or as Australians call it “horrible” or “an abomination”) cold brew coffee!

Taken together, it was a pretty terrific start to the day, that we’d highly recommend for any camping trip!