Our series of weekend walks along the Chesapeake and Ohio canal towpath is coming to a close this year. We have been slowly walking the towpath from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland for the last two and a half years. The penultimate walk on this weekend was far enough away that we decided we should stay over night in Hancock, Maryland and make it an Ausflug.

We left Friday afternoon about 230 p.m. in order to miss the rush-hour traffic when driving around the Beltway and north on Interstate 270. Rush hour starts very early around here, often as early as 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon. We almost missed the backups entirely, except for a few miles directly east of Frederick Maryland. But it wasn't too bad, and we arrived in our hotel room in Hancock, Maryland before 5 p.m.. We stayed at an Econolodge near the Interstate, but fortunately we had a room facing the town side which was quite quiet. For dinner, we took a chance on the "Park and Dine" restaurant at the other end of town. Although very modest from the outside, the inside was quite well furnished and food was excellent. We both had medium-size steaks, and I ate all of mine and about a third of Monika's. The green beans were also excellent, partly because they had pieces of bacon mixed in them. All in all, I was violating my fat-free diet in a big way, but it was fun!

We got to bed early, but it was hard to sleep. Partly, it is always a little hard to sleep in a strange bed. In this case, the bed was just a full-size bed and I finally had to lie diagonally across the bed to get enough room to stretch out. I am just too used to our queen size bed at home. We set the alarm in order to wake up in time to catch the complementary breakfast at 7 a.m. and still have enough time to drive to the gathering point in Paw-Paw West Virginia by 8 a.m.. We got up and got to breakfast at seven on the dot, and then tried to hurriedly eat bagels and some cereal and be on our way. The bagel toaster was slow, however, so we really didn't get on our way until about 715.

Other Volksmarchers were also staying at the hotel and having a quick breakfast before heading to the towpath. One of the women, obviously an ex-German, said in a worried tone that she didn't see how we could make it on time to our starting point. To say that to Monika was like waving a red flag at a bull. We hot footed it out of there, jumped in the car, and went roaring across a couple of mountain ranges to the starting point and Paw-Paw West Virginia. The tires were howling and the brakes were smoking because I had to keep up an average of at least 40 miles an hour and many of the mountain roads had really steep grades and hair-pin curves. We arrived with a couple minutes to spare, but I was anything but relaxed at the end of that drive. One thing I saw as we went up a mountain was a miniature Castle beside the road. It was built of blocks of cut stone and had turrets and crenellations and everything. I briefly glimpsed a sign offering tours, and I would certainly like to go back to take a tour of that Castle/house.

At Paw-Paw, we parked our car in a grassy field beside the campground and waited for the shuttle bus to take us to our starting point at Little Orleans, Virginia. The town of Little Orleans consists of 1 building, a general store/saloon/pool hall/mayor's office across the railroad tracks from the towpath. If we had not been worried about the long walk ahead of us, we would've walk in just to absorb some of the atmosphere. But we both really wanted to get on with the walk, so we proceeded through the tunnel under the railroad tracks and turned right onto the towpath to go up river.

The first few hours were easy. This section of the canal is particularly pretty. Many of the old segments have enough water in them to look realistic. Although the trees were not yet in leaf, there were a lot of wildflowers blooming along the canal banks. One in particular had the shape of a blue bell pointed downwards, and in many places it grew in great profusion. We also often saw some very interesting rock formations where the canal had been cut through. The bending and folding of the rock strata was very clear and rather impressive, considering how much force it would take to fold and bend rock.

There were quite a few bicyclists on this stretch. Apparently, the stretch from Paw-Paw down to Hancock, Maryland is popular for bicyclists because that length is both scenic and doable in one day on a bicycle. Some of bicyclists were groups of Boy Scouts who were obviously on an outing. It reminded me of the time that my boys and I had gone with the Boy Scouts on bicycles through the Paw-Paw tunnel and down to Hancock, Maryland. But that had been about 15 years ago, and I really couldn't remember much about it except that the tunnel had been very dark. Monika had never seen this stretch of the canal before, so it was all new and interesting to her.

The Western Maryland railroad also passed over the canal banks about five or six times during our walk. It crossed over so often because the canal was following all the bends in the river while the railroad was cutting straight across all these bends and loops. The railroad right-of-way was abandoned because that railroad had finally merged with the Baltimore and Ohio railroad that also has a line running down this part of the river. The bridges all looked rusty and were missing some of the railroad ties, so I avoided the temptation to try to climb across on one. There had been an effort to make the railroad right-of-way into a hiker biker trail, but that had failed due to local opposition, which was a shame.

Every so often we came to the ruins of a canal lock. The canal builders had been running out of money along the upper section of the canal, so these locks were more crudely and cheaply constructed than the locks down toward Washington, D.C.. In particular, these locks used pressure-treated lumber on the sides for waterproofing rather than the carefully cut and mortared stone of the other locks. Occasionally, you can even see the remains of that pressure treated wood on the side of the locks, which is kind of amazing considering that the canal has been abandoned for about 80 years.

One surprise we had along our trip was coming across a group of people leading llamas! We could hardly believe our eyes when we saw them, and really did a double take. But there they were, big as life and twice as furry! One of the critters really gave me a strange look as it went by. I had heard that llamas could spit, so I backed up and was very polite.

For couple of hours during our walk, we were talking with Nancy who is a longtime Volksmarcher. She had a lot of interesting stories to tell about the walks she had taken and people she had met, so we chatted away amiably which really made the miles go by. We finally got too hungry and stopped to eat while she pushed on ahead. Later in the day we passed her again when she had to stop and take care of some blisters. I had already bandaged five of my toes before the walk in an effort to avoid blisters, and fortunately that worked.

Nevertheless, we had been walking about five hours and were quite tired when we finally arrived at the Paw-Paw tunnel. However, that part of the trail was unique and interesting enough to make us forget how tired we were. First, the canal and towpath go through a little gorge or canyon that was cut in the rock leading up to the tunnel. At the entrance to the tunnel, the towpath is actually a boardwalk. But in the tunnel the towpath changes to a mud and gravel path right alongside the canal. It was dark enough in the the tunnel that it was hard keeping our footing, and we heard the guy ahead of us slip and almost fall.

In the middle of the tunnel, it was so dark I couldn't even see what was in the viewfinder of the camera. I just pointed it in the general direction of Monika and took a flash picture. Surprisingly, these pictures came out pretty well. In one of them, you can even see the grooves cut into the wood by the tow ropes of the canal barges over 80 years ago. The darkness and a sense of history in the worn grooves on the old wood railing made it a little spooky. But then we reached the light at the other end of the tunnel and emerged into the sunshine.

The finishing point at the campground was only a couple of hundred yards from the end of the tunnel. We were really dragging, but we limped to the finish point and had our books stamped. We decided to drive back to the hotel via Cumberland, Maryland rather than across the mountain ranges. That way was longer but was more interstate driving, and I was too tired to cope with the mountain driving again. In Cumberland next to the entrance of the interstate we found a Roy Rogers! We were both almost too tired to be hungry which means we were really tired indeed. As we rested, however, we recovered our appetites and ate a good meal. The drive back to the hotel was a lot more relaxing on the interstate, and when we got back to our room I just wanted to lay down for the rest of the evening.

After a while, however, Monika got restless and went out to shop. She found a grocery store that had skim milk and individual servings of cereal. That was a good find, because we had to leave the hotel so early the next morning that we couldn't even eat the complementary breakfast. So we had some of the milk for an evening stack and saved the rest for breakfast on the morrow.

The next day we were scheduled for the 730 a.m. bus, and we knew the drive back through Cumberland Maryland would take us about an hour. So we set the alarm for 6 a.m. and had to get up, shower, pack, and check out of the hotel by 630. We were still somewhat tired from the previous day, and getting up at 6 a.m. made it seem a lot like work! However, we drove the interstate back to Cumberland, which was a relaxing drive instead of being nerve racking. We parked in the schoolyard at Old Town, Maryland, and were shuttled back to Paw-Paw to start our walk.

Fortunately, the walk on the second day was only 17 kilometers rather than the 24 kilometers of the previous day. Since we started out rather tired, the shorter distance was a real life-saver. The walk was still pleasant although I felt like I was getting stiffer and stiffer as the day wore on. This part of the canal was also filled with water. Some sections had apparently been dammed up so that they would form fishing ponds, and we saw several guys fishing. We also found evidence of previous floods, some of which had been quite serious and damaged the canal. Among other things, we found an old railroad tie caught in the limbs of a tree on the towpath where apparently it had been thrown up by a flood. The old, abandoned railroad tracks still crossed over the canal occasionally and sometimes proceeded in parallel alongside it.

At one point, the trees had been cleared from the canal side of the towpath embankment, and the canal looked exactly as it probably looked when the canal boats were using it in 1800s. It really gave you a sense of what things would have looked like back then. We met and talked to a lot of nice walkers along the way, but there were almost no bicycles on this stretch of the canal. I think that was because the stretch downstream from Paw-Paw is considered more scenic, but we found this stretch to be almost as interesting.

We kept going slower and slower as the day wore on. I think we made a mistake in not stopping to have lunch or to rest at all during this hike. We both seemed to be in a hurry to get it over. At the end, my hips were getting sore, and I could tell that I was taking shorter strides in order to avoid the discomfort. Monica had a big blister forming underneath her foot, but couldn't do anything about it because of its location. So we were both in somewhat sad shape and glad to have it over as we came to the end of the walk at Old Town, Maryland.

After having our books stamped, we walked back to the school parking lot and collapsed into the car. I was glad it was an automatic because I certainly didn't feel like moving my legs a lot to drive it. We drove up to Cumberland and had lunch again at the Roy Rogers before driving home. While we were eating there, we picked up some material on the local attractions in Cumberland. It turns out that our final towpath walk on May 15th-16th will coincide with the “Canal Days” Festival. I hope they will have the usual assortment of food, crafts, and entertainment for that—it will give us something to do after the first walk on Saturday.

I was also very interested to find out that there is a steam train that runs on regular excursions from Cumberland to Frostberg, Maryland. Soon I was hatching a plan to combine our final walk on Sunday the 16th with a steam train trip that afternoon. Yahoo! All good things must end, but at least our C & O towpath walks will end in a puff of coal smoke and a blaze of glory!