Over the Mason-Dixon Line

Another long day of riding. I think 60 miles per day is a little more than I can keep up consistently.

In the morning, everything was dewy, which I expected but is still annoying. I didn’t leave until after 9 again, so the sun got high enough for things to start drying out, but I still had to pack a lot of things damp, and none of my clothes were fully dry.

Most of today’s riding was along the Torrey C Brown Rail Trail, also known as the Heritage Rail Trail (in Pennsylvania) or the Northern Central Railroad Trail (in Maryland).

It’s a nice trail, and towns along the way seem to really cater to people walking or riding along it. It’s roughly cut in two by the Mason-Dixon Line, and there’s a little informational stand at the point it crosses.

The trail is really beautiful on the Maryland side. It passes through Gunpowder Falls State Park and criss-crosses the Little Falls and Big Gunpowder Falls Rivers. It was also very slightly downhill, which always helps morale.

The trail runs out in Cockeysville, a northern suburb of Baltimore. I’d heard bad things about the approach into Baltimore from the north, so I had plotted out a route that went more into the hills but avoided the busy roads. I mostly succeeded in that, but the hills were a pretty brutal price in the late-afternoon heat. The uphills did come with corresponding downhills, at least. I may have been a bit too narrowly-focused on the route, though, since I also cut out Druid Hill Park, which is apparently pretty cool, is part of the East Coast Greenway’s approach, and would not have been complicated to integrate. Oh well.

I’m staying near Johns Hopkins University for the night. It’s a nice campus, lots of open grassy areas and very peaceful on a summer night.

Route Map

Gallery

I’ll upload the images later.