Milepost 185.5 to Milepost 140

A museum provides a nice glimpse of the canal’s history, but we spent more time on the streets of Cumberland, a city that flourished in the industrial age and missed most of modern economic expansion, but also escaped the wrecking ball, offering stone facades and architectural flourishes that were well over a century old.

Beyond Cumberland is the Paw Paw tunnel, 3,118 feet long, built between 1836 and 1850, long before electrification. It remains unlit, but the lights on our handlebars illuminated the jagged rock of the tunnel wall and the dark waters of the canal that lined the hard-packed path.

We ended the day in Little Orleans, which is on the Maryland side of the Potomac River but has a West Virginia feel. At Bill’s Place, the only restaurant, where you can get any kind of food you want as long as it is fried, the walls and ceiling are decorated with a Confederate flag and a Wallace for President poster. Dollar bills were pinned to the ceiling, and there is a general store in the corner. It was a mash-up of late 1800s and mid-1900s, so it was no surprise to us that we landed between the two at the Town Hill Hotel Bed and Breakfast in Little Orleans, built on the National Pike in 1920, which claims to be the first motel in the state. If a Model T Ford pulled up for the night, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Milepost 140 to Milepost 60

We took our only significant detour off the canal, and diverted to Antietam, site of the single bloodiest day of fighting in American history and the first major battle fought on Union territory. Like many battlefields, it is now pockmarked with statues erected by aging Union veterans in the 1870s and 1880s, commemorating the gallantry of their military units. We opted for the National Park Service’s movie presentation, partly for the pleasure of sitting in upholstered chairs, but the movie was actually pretty good. The battle is a bit hard to imagine now, and much has changed; one of my companions pointed out that the Bloody Cornfield, of Union legend, is now planted in soybeans.

We left the trail that evening at a railroad bridge with a footpath, which leads across the Potomac to Harpers Ferry, W.Va., half of which is a national park commemorating John Brown’s attempt to trigger the civil war in October 1859. He was caught there by a detachment of United States Marines, led by Col. Robert E. Lee. The history is a bit hard to get to for a cyclist, as we had to carry our bikes up a circular staircase to reach the pedestrian path on the railroad bridge. But Harpers Ferry has a variety of hotels and restaurants. We picked the Town’s Inn, which offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, and is open year-round. The place is popular with hikers; the Appalachian Trail crosses through the town.

Milepost 60 to Milepost 14

By Sunday, the weather turned hot and sticky.

As the temperature increased, so did the crowds in the last 60 miles back to Washington. We had plenty of distraction, though. White’s Ferry, the only one that still operates, is popular with people who raise horses, and you’ll spot lines of horse trailers waiting to cross on the ferry that pulls itself across the Potomac with a cable, the Jubal Early. (Yes, it’s south of the Mason-Dixon line and yes, he was on the Confederate side.)

We ended the trip at the Great Falls Tavern Visitors Center, about 14 miles north of the terminus in Georgetown, because it is close to my house.