Little Orleans MD to Williamsport Day Five

06/27/12 54m

Rode from Little Orleans MD to Williamsport.

Departed Little Orleans with a five-mile descent, it was much more descent than I liked but I was torqued at the Town Hill B&B charging $6 for a shuttle ride after charging me $150 for a room with an outdated bathroom, and even though the breakfast was top-notch I wanted to get away from them.

This is a descent that if you wanted to kill somebody on a bicycle and make it look like an accident, you could fool with somebody's fork or brakes and it would happen.

One of the bikes had a distorted tire, so the rider took it to Hancock and C&O Bicycles to replace both tires - more than anything else, they'd worn out through use, and he took the opportunity to replace 1.95" tires with 1.5" tires.

We rode a few miles on the C&O Canal Trail and then made a quick transition to the paved Western MD Rail Trail (WMRT), which is wonderful and a welcome change-of-pace halfway through the week. We zipped along pretty well and stopped in town at world-famous Weaver's for lunch and rejoined with our rider and his new tires.

The food at Weaver's was great, as always (one rider said the soup was one of the best meals she'd had), and the pies were over-the-top good. Going in to the restaurant the group seemed a bit perfunctory to me, but coming out they were all chipper and proclaiming the virtues of Weaver - it was a good morale stop.

We continued along the paved WMRT and came upon a recumbent tandem being used to exercise four sled dogs - that's a pretty narrow niche. This is the WoofDriver.



We continued south along the WMRT and came to the end of the trail. We backtracked a half-mile and found the turn to rejoin the C&O Canal Trail. One of the riders got a bee sting, that turned into two days of discomfort.

We got to Slackwater, which is one of my favorite places on the Potomac, and today I saw kids jumping into the river and climbing back up on the rocks. I wouldn't have thought the place was conducive to that. Continued along and saw Dam Five:


Entered Williamsport at the Cushwa Basin and started the climb through town to the Red Roof Inn. Saw this license plate parked at a residence, had to take a picture:


The Red Roof Inn worked real well, economical, quite a few bicyclists, wifi, adjacent Waffle House - all my needs fulfilled. We had dinner at Tony's Pizza Time Cafe, excellent and highly recommended.