The C&O, Part 4: The Trail Just Keeps Going

There are 60 miles left on the trail, and I’m doing most of them today. I was very late to leave in the morning, not rolling out of camp until nearly 11:30.

Today is notable for being the first time I haven’t stopped into a town of any kind all day. The most notable stop along the trail was the Paw Paw Tunnel, which is about half a mile long and is a small attraction in its own right. I half-rode, half-walked my bike through. There’s not a ton of space between the railing and the tunnel wall, and the surface is somewhat uneven rock, so I had to be careful.

The trail then runs along the edge of Green Ridge State Forest, and the river gets more natural and undeveloped again.

I stopped at a campsite 15 miles out from Cumberland, and was informed by a man named Chris that I had chosen wisely. He’s in his 70s and in his retirement lives off of his bike in the summers. He knows the C&O very well, and apparently all the closer campsites have a lot of noise from a rail yard. He was staying there tonight as well, heading the opposite direction, and we talked for a bit about our bikes, our tents, and ourselves.

There was a storm in the forecast that night. We heard thunder but missed the first wave. The second wave brought rain and lightning, but it sounds like we still dodged the worst of it. I was tuned to the weather station on my radio, and apparently in parts of Pennsylvania they had serious wind gusts and half-dollar sized hail! My tent can protect me from the rain, but that’s a rather taller order.

It is an unfortunate fact of this trip that I’m much more exposed to the elements. In an emergency situation, if I’m at a relatively undeveloped campsite, I don’t have a ton of options for shelter. I’ve been checking the forecasts, though, and that’s about the best I can do to prepare.

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