EatingIsImportant
Walking Is Important
C&O Canal Towpath, Mile 88.1-122.8 (McMahon's Mill to Hancock Visitors Center)
It's been a week and a half since we returned from our latest 3-day backpacking trip on the C&O Canal. I love the hiking but my desire to write about it has waned over time. Nevertheless, an instinct for completeness will not let me finish the trail without also finishing this account of it. Also, it gives me an excuse to take and share photos.
The weather from August 23-25 was perfect: highs around 80 degrees, not terribly humid, breezy, sunny. We could not have asked for more perfect conditions, except that a few weeks ago it was really rainy, and the subsequent standing water seems to have led to a bumper crop of tiny, hungry mosquitoes. We had to ration the bug dope. When my kid got home, they tried to count their bug bites, but lost count or got bored after 150. Things were okay in the sunshine and breezes, but there were miles-long tree-shaded passages with boggy, shallow, temporary pools in the depression left on one side by the former canal. I called these "Mosquito Alleys." We itched and got used to it.
We started out from McMahon's Mill on a Thursday morning. It was immediately clear how high the water was everywhere. The little creek that runs through McMahon's Mill was rushing fast and hard. The towpath was muddy and, in some cases, water was streaming down the rock face on our right and crossing the trail on its way to the river. Where the trail verged on the Potomac, water was cresting over the edge.
That's water across the trail.
Rocks at edge of the trail are supposed to be some feet above the river, I reckon.
​The mud was good for some things.
Heron tracks.
Also, there were a million butterflies everywhere, especially this blue kind, which are apparently called (confusingly) Red-Spotted Purples:
We grabbed a quick lunch early on at the Opequon Junction campsite, then continued hiking until we reached an unexpected row of vacation (or perhaps even permanent) cabins and mobile homes, as the trail briefly opened out to become a gravel road.
Tree by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
My kid pointed out the tree in the picture above. This is not an actual human house, but a child's drawing somehow drafted into reality.
​There were dragonflies, and lovely greenery:
And hikers striking poses.
By the end of the day we had arrived at our destination: the town of Williamsport. The Conococheague Aqueduct, which the trail crosses near the town, was closed for restoration, and the consequent detour through Williamsport would lengthen our hike by a couple of miles. We'd decided to stay at the Red Roof Inn, about half a mile off the trail detour, which was owned by a very nice South Asian couple and was cheap and comfortable. We did have to hike a little way along the shoulder of the highway, though, and a woman carrying too many bags asked us, fellow vagabonds, if we were "heading north." It was a funny town: lots of historic buildings, a few fixed up fancy, and a lot of obvious poverty too. Several people seemed to be scraping by holding permanent flea markets on their lawns.
Approach to Williamsport from the canal side is most attractive.
​Exhausted after 12 miles even in nice summer weather, especially the final mile by the roadside, we ate dinner at the Waffle House in front of the Red Roof Inn. It was the saddest Waffle House we'd ever seen: almost no customers, the staff draped in various attitudes of hostility and/or despair, monosyllabic except for a lonely, ostracized fry cook.
We made some phone calls. We slept hard. We took grateful hot showers in the morning as though this weren't the first night of our "camping" trip. Then we hiked back into town to the only available cafe besides the Waffle House, Desert Rose.
Desert Rose, we realized as we approached, was an oasis of rainbows (including the gigantic mug we have at home that reads "NOBODY KNOWS I'M GAY"), featuring a large effusive male employee with a braying laugh and obvious Heart of Gold, Rose herself (quiet and unassuming, but friendly), and a surprising number (considering my experience of the town so far) of gay and/or politically liberal customers. They had interesting local candies. They had hiker supplies. They had really awesome coffee. My kid felt welcomed, which is not always the case in western Maryland. Highly recommended, not that you have a lot of options when you are in Williamsport.
After breakfast we hopped back on the trail detour, which went all over including through some brickyards before reconnecting with the towpath.
It was another lovely morning, a bit more humid. We hiked close to the river. Note how muddy the water is, compared to other years.
Is that a tiny spider on my camera in the lower right-hand corner?
When it came time for lunch, we sought a spot in full sun in order to deter mosquitoes. I found a small sandy beach on the river shore with space to set up my beloved tiny camp stove. I lighted it and made some rather putrid instant coffee. The stove heated up the sand and rocks around it to a surprising degree, so that it was painful to stand near it in bare feet, and I dropped my first pot of boiling water in the sand in surprise when I tried to pick it up using a rag as I usually do. Hands-on science. Another surprise: the mysterious creatures milling around in manic clusters on the surface of the shallows.
I was not 100% sure whether they were insects or crustaceans, not that there's that much difference. We got very hot during lunch, but we put our feet in the river, and it was worth it to be away from the mosquitoes for a little while.
During the afternoon, we got some relief from mosquito-alley sameness by passing a big dam and then a series of picturesque locks and old mills in quick succession. The trail does lack variety sometimes, but this was a good bit.
This lockhouse is immediately across the river from the building in the previous photo.
The house at Lock 46.
Old broken-down mill.
Occasionally we met new friends:
Hail fellow, well met!
Tired and footsore, we arrived at Fort Frederick State Park around 5:30 pm. We'd reserved a campsite, but it was necessary to hike a little way into the park to fill up our water containers and check in with the park ranger. Fort Frederick seemed oddly teeming with people. Most them, even more oddly, were men with complex facial hair wearing drab-colored clothing of an antique style. They gazed curiously at me as if I were the one out-of-place in my hiking clothes and sneakers. They were doing things like pumping water, chopping wood, examining one another's firearms, and setting up similarly undyed tents to sell homemade crafts. This was confusing. Was Fort Frederick a sort of living-history museum?
As it turned out, the ranger said they were "having a muster" that weekend. Apparently there are French-and-Indian War re-enactors. Lots of them. One (white, I think) guy was even dressed as an Indian, with paint and feathers. Hmm. I pretty much just ignored everybody as I passed among their tents and returned to my child, waiting by the water pumps, and our campsite by the beaver pond, rich with mosquitoes.
It is required that you pitch your tent within the square of gravel.
I didn't take many photographs that night, nor did we indeed do much of anything, except cook dinner as quickly as possible while running about slapping ourselves and having an ongoing meltdown, then eat and hang out inside our tent. I did take some photos from inside the tent.
It was nice (though not terribly comfortable) reading beneath the trees, safe from the mosquitoes.
In the morning, our neighbors from across the campground driveway, a couple of middle-aged women, came over to inquire what we were up to. They'd come for the muster, out of boredom and not any special interest, they seemed to suggest. Not too much to do around here. But one of the women was clearly envious of our adventure, the way we were breaking down our whole camp in a few minutes and neatly stuffing it into our packs (something that never fails to amaze me either!). Where were we going? How long had we been doing it? Maybe she might try something like that too, when her health was better. Why does backpacking so ignite the imaginations of onlookers? I have read so many books about other people's hikes; answered so many questions about my own very modest ones.
This third and last day was more humid still, and blisters were had by all. We were back in the world of startling green, though, and I love that.
There was also a surprising amount of corn in these parts. Blisters were tended to in a nearby cornfield:
And we met even more friends.
Overall we saw our usual variety of wild animals this trip: a doe and her fawn, green and blue herons, pileated woodpeckers, many wild ducks, many turtles, a snake, a few frogs/toads, fish, zillions of butterflies, some caterpillars but not as many as last year, spiders, mystery water bugs, and a really excessive number of mosquitoes. We heard owls but did not see them this time.
By the latter half of the day, kid was limping and having trouble envisioning the last few miles with their painful blisters. Various minor surgeries ensued. Lunch was a purely functional affair eaten plunked down by the edge of the path in a sunny patch. There was still cool stuff, like this culvert, but we were ready to hike to the finish line.
About 3:30 pm, we were halting in to our final destination, the Hancock Visitors Center, at mile 122.8. Final mile marker of the trip at right-->
We had two hours until my husband was due to pick us up and the mosquitoes were hungry as ever. The sky had clouded over, which meant we couldn't just hang out in the sun as a respite. Hopefully the Hancock Visitors Center would have indoor stuff! A restroom! Maybe a snack bar! Comfy benches!
Unfortunately, there was none of that. The building was locked. There were some porta-potties down by the road. Nowhere really to sit except in the grass, which kid did with a blanket wrapped around their whole body to reduce access to their bare skin. The spot itself was very, very pretty:
But we were miserable nevertheless. Eventually I flagged down a young, bearded guy who seemed to be headed down to the river from his truck, carrying a bucket. Did he know how far it was to town and services? We didn't have it in us to walk very far.
Oh, there's a truck stop just down the road, he said. Restaurant, gas and store and everything. How far? About 1000 feet.
It might have been closer. I've rarely been so thrilled to enter a dark, dingy, and barely occupied dining room. Kid ordered a basket of fried shrimp and french fries; I ordered eggs and toast and coffee. We arranged for my husband to pick us up at the restaurant. There were restrooms. We are wimps, but for a few days every year, we get to feel like badasses.
C&O Canal Towpath, Mile 58.0-88.1 (Weverton to McMahon's Mill)
Time for what we now consider our yearly backpacking trip. Kid and I-- and my husband, driving a separate car-- set off for northwestern Maryland to drop off our car at the endpoint of the three-day hike, the McMahon's Mill access near Hagerstown. As we approached down the narrow lane to the gravel parking lot and turned off the radio, we could suddenly hear that my car was making a new, deep, terrifying noise-- a sort of mechanical whalesong-- every time I braked. For an assortment of other reasons, it was already quite late in the morning, and also Sunday: no time to go looking for a mechanic. We left the car in the lot. It remained in the back of my mind for the next 50 hours.
We piled our packs into my husband's even older car and drove to the start point, a place where the Appalachian Trail intersects the C&O just south of Harper's Ferry. It was a nice day for a walk: 70s, dry, not too sunny. There were seemingly hundreds of people on bicycles.
This was, I learned, because we were so near Harper's Ferry, and Harper's Ferry was crawling with tourists. We heard many languages as we crossed the picturesque railroad bridge into West Virginia to visit briefly and use the restroom-- so many languages that it reminded me of being a tourist in Italy just a couple of weeks before. I hadn't realized Harper's Ferry would be such a major attraction.
Did my kid want an ice cream in Harper's Ferry? No, they did not. They just wanted to get the hell out of there.
It took very little walking north along the trail past Harper's Ferry to leave all the people and bicycles behind. Suddenly we were mostly alone.
We saw a lot of small critters and some larger animals: a really impressive profusion of caterpillars and millipedes, plenty of deer including fawns, at least two bald eagles, green and blue herons, the usual turtles, frogs and toads. No owls this year. Maybe that's a June thing. None of the deer wanted to have their pictures taken.
I thought this was probably a luna moth caterpillar, but it's not. It's a Regal Moth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citheronia_regalis
I take this same exact photo every time we go hiking.
Whaaat?
This section of the trail was also chock-full of neat caves carved into the hillside on our right. We were too scared to hang out in any of them.
Our first day of hiking involved a fairly steady push, as we didn't get started until about noon, and had 11.5 miles to go before camping. At least we had a campsite reserved at the Antietam battlefield campground, which is not technically part of the C&O Canal trail but is right alongside it. There are 20 campsites lined up all in a row along the riverbank: only two were occupied, plus the campground manager's RV turned out to be right across the road from the site I'd reserved. All night long a bright, extremely safe streetlight shone directly onto our tent. I felt quite secure but it was difficult to sleep. Also, we got cold.
Drinking tea.
Warming cold hands.
The next morning, the mist rose from the river and everywhere else.
Eventually it cleared up and became a beautiful, perfect day.
As you can see, the only other tent in the campground sprouted up right next to ours overnight.
Our second day of hiking was really laid-back. We only had 9.5 miles to go and reached our planned camping spot around 3:30.
A couple of features along the way--
We'd been hoping, sometime during that second day, to stop in a town-- or in a hiker/biker store that I'd read about-- and buy some cups of non-instant coffee or snacks. However, the towns were a good mile off the trail-- not worth the extra travel on such a short hike, though I'm sure they would seem like a treat on a longer one-- and the hiker/biker store turned out to be only open on weekends. Alas.
After we pitched our tent at the Horseshoe Bend hiker/biker campsite (mile 79.2), literally only 3 other people passed by for the entire remainder of the day. We were completely alone. Kid was tired and went inside the tent for most of the afternoon, leaving me to read at the picnic table. When it was dark that night, it was really, really dark. This time, we knew it would get cold, so we battened down our tent cover right away, and went to sleep wearing fleeces, jackets, and socks. Much better.
The next morning (the last morning), I had (thankfully) just enough time to boil water for coffee before it started to drizzle. Kid and I retreated to the tent, drinking coffee, eating a cold breakfast instead of the oatmeal I'd planned, and reading books. It was nice. We waited for the rain to stop, but it didn't; instead it got steadier. Around 9:30 we gave up and went out in the rain to break camp.
Wearing windbreakers, with our rain covers over our packs, we hiked away into the rain.
We learned something about rain: it makes you hike much faster. Because there is no appeal to stopping: sit on a wet rock? Get chilled instead of keeping warm by moving? We hiked the whole 9 miles out to my car by 1:30, stopping just once to use the bathroom, snacking a little out of our pockets. It was not bad as long as you kept moving. And, by this third day, we were developing a rhythm. We could probably have hiked twice as far by nightfall; but we didn't need to.
A dam in the rain.
The final mile was beautiful, but did not lend itself to photography. The usual trail-between-trees emerged out onto the cliffside by the river, where a concrete path had been constructed. Wildflowers ranged down the bank towards the water, and I saw a hummingbird coming from that direction. An eagle was soaring back and forth over the great curve in the river. All too soon we reached McMahon's Mill:
...at which point we climbed into the dry haven of the car, pushed back the seats, and ate lunch. There were a bunch of people meeting in the parking lot in the rain, pointing at things up the hillside. Eventually they all drove away in their separate official vehicles. It seemed to be a consultation about the environmental impact of some proposed construction.
When we had recovered sufficiently, kid researched the best auto repair shop in Hagerstown and we took our Subaru over to Dave's Corner, where Dave's delightful son Devin fixed my brakes within an hour and a half while we drank coffee and ate cheese puffs and donut holes from the Sheetz across the street. For some reason, although we were chilly, we continued to sit outside while our car was repaired. (It had stopped raining.) Some kind of switch had flipped. We no longer wanted to be indoors.
​Two weeks later, I've been indoors all day.
C&O Canal Towpath, Mile 55.0-58.0 (Brunswick to Weverton)
The kid has an amazing ability to pretend they don't know I'm taking a picture of them.
Today is my kid's 16th birthday. We did not go hiking today; that was weeks ago-- I think two-- when, during a particularly temperate spell of weather, kid said "Do you want to go hiking sometime soon?" We went the next day. I feel so lucky to have a kid who still wants to hang out sometimes, who still gets excited about bugs, but now also enjoys a really good cup of coffee and knows what's going on with Trump-Russia. This is the ideal companion.
​It's a pretty long drive by now to the start-point of our hikes. We started this time in the town of Brunswick, MD, sleepy but picturesque, and boasting this colorful church-turned-coffee-shop full of stained-glass.
We both bought coffees, and kid got a sandwich, because they didn't have a soggy leftover Mediterranean Veggie sandwich from Panera in their backpack the way I did. We liked this place so much that we seriously discussed taking a weekend vacation to Brunswick sometime, just so we could hang out there.
Upon departing our vehicle, kid decided that they would eat their delicious sandwich immediately, so we sat on a rock just outside the car while kid devoured lunch. (I saved my soggy sandwich for later, though it turned out not to improve with age.) It was a perfect day, sunny and with temperatures in the high 70s-- beautifully cool for Maryland in the summer. I was happy just to sit and soak up my vitamin D.
​After a bit, we got on the trail. It looked much as it usually does:
Super-green. There were some nice details:
A mossy stump that looks like the cliffs of New Zealand.
Someone we met on the road.
Not my photo. This is what a green heron looks like.
Animals we saw besides this toad: 3 beautiful fawns, a green heron, a family of ducks, lots of turtles, colorful goldfinches and cardinals, and a multitude of shimmering dragonflies and shiny green beetles. I don't know where the fawns' mothers were.
Kid was also delighted with what seemed to us like a truffula tree​, but appears to have many names, including Persian silk tree or mimosa. It had pretty pink tufts that smelled amazing. All my life I'd been searching for trees such as these.
Not my photo
At the 58-mile mark, the C&O Canal Towpath intersects with the Appalachian Trail. This was the point where I sat down on another rock to eat my own sandwich, pulling off large sections of soggy bread and wilted lettuce. There was far too much feta cheese. I regretted everything.
It was a shortish walk, without drama, but happy. Kid and I are planning another 3-day blitz in August.
C&O Canal Towpath, Mile 50.9-55.0 (Lander to Brunswick)
At Lander, looking at the river before we set out on the trail.
It has been over 9 months since my teenager and I have been on the C&O Canal trail. Last summer, we completed a 30+-mile multi-day backpacking trip. Ever since, we (and by "we," I mostly mean my teenager) have been too busy to fit in even a day hike. Also, a lot has happened in the past nine months.
This spring day was no exception. It was Good Friday-- the day, as it happened, between NBC News' report that the U.S. was threatening a preemptive strike on North Korea, and the Day of the Sun, the Saturday when North Korea was expected to display the kind of provocation that could lead to that preemptive strike. So I was walking with that "this could be our last hike before World War III starts" feeling.
It was a beautiful day. It was sunny, the temperature in the 60s (the teenager took off their sweater and hat just after the above photo was taken), and spring wildflowers were everywhere. The trees were leafing out and still that intense yellow-green. Animals were sort of scarce, with the exception of birds and bugs-- no turtles this time-- but the flowers made up for it. We talked a lot, about big stuff, but only a little bit about the potential end of the world.
This stretch of the trail first crossed the restored Catoctin Aqueduct, then took us down 2-3 miles of pleasant, unassuming, flowery woodland path, before arriving unceremoniously at a 200-unit RV-friendly campground. This campground, where we ate our lunch because we were hungry, also seemed to be undergoing serious construction, with ongoing loud machinery noises, trucks lumbering back and forth, and even a giant crane taking down tree limbs. There were also Bobcats scooting ponderously about. It was not even remotely peaceful, and I felt sorry for the people who were staying there anyway.
Unpeaceful camping.
After lunch, we walked one more mile down a wide gravel road to reach the town of Brunswick. This was not the nicest part of the walk. There were cars. Brunswick looked as though it might be worth exploring, but we did not explore it.​ We just turned around and went back down the gravel road.
I would be remiss at this point if I did not include this photo which my child insisted I take. This architectural detail is part of a water treatment plant along the road just shy of Brunswick. My child was greatly amused by the "doors-to-nowhere" effect. Water treatment plant workers: be careful! There were also some random wooden barn-door things (not shown) stuck on the sides of the building, again apparently just because they looked rustic, not for any actual purpose.
It was actually kind of an attractive building for a treatment plant... as long as you didn't look too closely and start asking questions.
​So, anyway, back to the pleasant flowery path. It looked like this and was, in the quiet parts, entirely lovely.
​We saw a pair of wood ducks, which hid
behind a tree after they noticed us noticing them. As always on the canal towpath, we heard a ton of woodpeckers but could not see them. And we got some photos of this egret:
There was also this, sticking out of a crevice in a tree, so high up neither of us could have reached it. A very tall man might have been able to (and indeed must have?). It was a very long, thin jawbone of something, with teeth, along with some other assorted sticks and stuff. Very Blair Witch Project.
We weren't scared, though.
​Extra credit participation: what kind of animal is this??
C & O Canal
DC Area Hikes
Distance Hiking
Just Walking
Neighborhood Heritage Trails
Photos used under Creative Commons from Tim Evanson, randomduck, jinxmcc, randomduck, Carly & Art, richardefreeman, Cuyahoga jco, randomduck, Tobyotter, roberthuffstutter, MichaelLaMartin, vastateparksstaff, Wayne National Forest, Hunter-Desportes, brian.gratwicke, mtch3l, edenpictures