Bike Friendly Places: Giuseppe's in Frostburg MD, Rockwood Mill Shoppes

Wed 10/8 33m

Fall Foliage Ride 2014, Rockwood PA to Frostburg MD. Today's ride was began and ended with two businesses extending great courtesy to two itinerant cyclists.

Started in Rockwood PA, and there really isn't a designated or obvious place to park and leave a car overnight. Walked into the Rockwood Mill Shoppes and Opera House and asked, Hey can I park in your lot overnight? And they said, No Problem.

Great ride. Twelve miles to Meyersdale, arrived at 2.15pm. The best breakfast-lunch place on the trail, GI Dayroom, closes at 2pm during their winter season so that wasn't available, and the restaurant at Morguen Toole doesn't open until 4pm. Between 2pm and 4pm it's Meyersdale Taint Time: t'aint breakfast and t'aint dinner, and while I know there's a Sheetz in town it wasn't compelling enough to draw us into Meyersdale proper.

From Meyersdale (MP32) we climbed 8 more miles to the Continental Divide (MP24) and then enjoyed the Glorious Glide. Great view from the Mt. Savage Vista on the east side of the mountain.

Between the Borden Tunnel and Frostburg construction vehicles are using the service road adjacent to the trail to have access into their work zone, and at points where the space narrows and there's no service road they've done a great job of marking the situation for both the trucks and bikes. Nicely done.

Pulled into Frostburg. From the trail, it's a series of switchbacks up to the Depot; from the Depot, its a slightly imposing hill up to Main Street. Frostburg is a very different town (than Meyersdale or Rockwood, for example) in that it's economy is driven by the local University and so it's got some great restaurants, etc. It's already a developed town with what seems like a working economy. In fact it's not overtly bikey

Several years ago I'd enjoyed dinner at Guiseppe's and wanted to have dinner there. It's very close to the Depot/Main Streets intersection so we went there directly on our bikes.

I went in to the restaurant hoping to ask the manager, can we put our bikes in back of the restaurant. He said, Just two bikes? Bring them in and put them in the coat room. I was so gruntled. He said: we're not crowded, there's only two bikes, it's not winter where people are dropping off coats - seems like it should work today. wow

Dinner was very good, much much better than the standard small-town meal. Recommended.

Rode about 1.5 miles to the Days Inn. They had no problems with bikes in the room, I would stay there again.