Are you ready for picture overload! Ever since this summer bike trip I have been waiting to write about and share all the hundreds of pictures we took! Don't worry I won't really put all of the pictures on here:)
The reason for this trip originally started with Pappap and I wanted to do it a couple of summers ago. I am one that when I get an idea in my head, I have a hard time letting it go, and that is how this trip came about. I was so in love with the idea of biking from Pittsburgh to Washington DC on the GAP trail and the Appalachian trail. They follow an old railroad track so the up and down grade of elevation is small. So last Christmas I decided we were going to do this as a family and to prove it to my family I got them all biking shorts, helmets, and camelbacks for water. I think it was really funny at Christmas, but I was serious and it finally came true. I will spoil the ending, but we did not go the the whole way from Pitt to DC, we started in Ohiopyle, PA and went to Frostburg, MD. We did about 80 miles in 1.5 days of biking. Someday I will go back and do the whole thing, but for now I am so happy with how it went this summer.
My whole family went, but my parents decided they might not make it the whole way so they switched off back and forth driving our car so we always had it with us.
We stopped for a lot of snack breaks and to give our butts a break!
Mom was really excited about biking and at first I don't think she really wanted to drive the car much. But our first part of the trip was from Ohiopyle to Confluence which is about 11 miles and by the time we met dad there she was so ready to get off that bike and hand it over to dad!
Behind us is the Pinkerton tunnel. It has been closed for a while so you have to take a detour around it. It was only when we got to the other side and could see through it, that we realized the tunnel was about 150 yards long but we had to detour 1 mile around it! Good thing we found that out after or we may have been carrying our bikes right through it. Especially since this happened during our detour....
A tree had fallen down right in the middle of the path of our detour. We had to make a nice assembly line to get our 4 bikes over them. It was all part of the experience and it was a lot of fun!
If you haven't figured it out by now, the views were amazing during our whole ride! Believe me the pictures don't do it justice, but we had 2 amazing days with awesome views!
This was a sweet bridge over the highway or something but we stopped to take pictures on it. And let me just say that day 1 was the hardest on the bikes with all of our butts. We were sore and maybe complaining a little bit, but it was all in good fun. Occasionally I would complain a lot about my butt and they would all give me a hard time since I was the one who really wanted to do this.
By this point we were pretty close to finishing for the day, and we were so excited!
I love the people you meet along the way. There was an older couple who was biking the whole path and I was really jealous of them but for the 2 days we would keep running into them at stops and we even stayed in the same hotel. But it just seems that everyone you meet on the path was so nice and they would say hi or even smile at you, I have found this true when hiking as well. I wish the rest of the world was like that. If everyone walked around smiling or saying hi to people they walked past, then the world would be a lot happier of a place. Maybe it is just nature that brings it out in some people.
After we left the bridge I knew we only had about a mile left and so I took off and was bookin' it. The rest could not keep up but I knew that I just had to be done for the day. I wanted off of my bike seat and I needed a break for my thighs were killing me. I made it first and I was joking that it was a good thing I was wearing the yellow jersey like in the Tour de France.
We stayed in this hostel that was pretty big but kinda creepy because it used to be an old mortuary or something like that. But luckily we had a giant room and it did not take long for us to crash. The best part was us trying to walk to dinner that night!! But I am pretty sure we came back to the room and fell asleep before it was dark outside.
Going to bed as sore as we were, we were unsure how we were going to make it another day and we were dreading getting back on our bike seats!
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