Updated 3 Goals

When I explained the three goals of our trail rides to a wise woman I know, she felt we were cheating on the Smiling goal. She said that anytime you engage with someone, they can typically smile. She recommended that we come up with a goal to replace the smile goal, such as learning about the area where we are traveling. I took her wisdom to heart, and today was Expeditionary Learning at its best, with a mix of high adventure.

We stopped for lunch in the town of williamsport. They have kept a small section of the canal operational with a working lock and an aqueduct. This is the aqueduct where water in the canal flows over a Gorge or in this case Creek below.

This is the operational lock. Those wooden doors are keeping back hundreds of gallons of water. When a boat pulled in From Below down by Mike the gates on that end would shut and then the gates near Ridge would open and fill the lock with water raising the boat to the new level. Mike said that Leonardo da Vinci was the inventor of this process. It’s lock is 100 ft long by 15 ft wide. The boats that applied these canals were about 90 ft long and 14 ft wide so they fit just inside the lock.

The other interesting thing about Williamsport is that it was the Crossing Place of the Potomac for General Robert E. Lee’s Army on its way to Gettysburg. After the defeat at Gettysburg, Lee brought the Army back through Williamsport in Retreat to Virginia, which is just across the Potomac. I was in Gettysburg last week on my way home from dropping off the Suburban in Washington dc. That was a somber experience.

The writing was even more spectacular today. Every mile has beautiful hardwood forest on either side of the trail. Then the slope on the right side goes down to the Potomac River which is quite beautiful. Along one stretch at the Potomac the Towpath was cut into the cliff wall. The boats were pulled through the Potomac rather than I can help. For us this created an amazing bike path which was about 15 ft wide, Cliff to our left Rising upward and Cliff to our right Rising downward to the Potomac water. It was beautiful and fun to ride.

As noted in the title, our Expedition turned a bit adventurous and almost epic when we arrived at the bridge Crossing to Harper’s ferry. There was a construction zone around the steps that take you up to the bridge to cross into Harpers ferry. Apparently the National Park Service at decided to remove the steps and replace them. This of course took forever and in the interim they had generously provided a shuttle. Of course this generosity only extended between the hours of 9:00 and 6:00. We arrived near 7:00.

Thankfully, the hotel in Harper’s Ferry was nice enough to cancel our reservation. Unfortunately, the next hotel was almost 10 miles down the trail, and we’d already done 75 MI. Additionally, it was approaching dark. In any case, we had little choice, so we headed out and pedaled as hard as we could. When we finally got to the town, A train was parked across the railroad crossing. He eventually moved, but that put us at the hotel about 9:30. A bit of a long, but fun and adventurous day. It was also a new record for the boys in mileage per day, and I think they felt quite proud of themselves, as well; they should. They didn’t complain at all and pedaled hard the entire day.