Pennsylvania's 72nd Annual Maple Festival Featuring New US 219 South
I take the newly completed Highway; US 219 South to the Pennsylvania Maple Festival. The new 4 lane superhighway, opened in October 2018, offers a faster trip from Somerset than old US 219. I pass through Bakersville, Somerset Township and borough, Berlin (home of Snyders of Berlin), Salisbury, and into Meyersdale. The last part of the trip is on old 219 (2 lane highway). The Maple Festival itself begins about 4.5 minutes into the video, and is shown with a variety of photos of Meyersdale as well as the Sugar Shack, where maple syrup production is demonstrated and described by a resident and maple producer. The founder of Meyersdale, Peter Meyers is depicted on a building in town. There is also a beautiful mural showing Meyersdale's colorful railroad history. Today, the rail line has been converted in to a Rail Trail (product of the Rails to Trails Conservancy), called the Great Allegheny Passage. To learn more about the rail trail, check out my 2018 video- 2018 Maple Festival and Cross Country Skiing Adventure on the Great Allegheny Passage (3 hours 1 minute 19 seconds). The actual Maple Festival gets a little more coverage in the 2018.
video.
The GAP as the bike trail is called, runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, where it connects to the C and O Toepath trail (that goes to Washington, DC).
Great Allegheny Passage Meyarsdale, PA to Mason-Dixon Line (Maryland) with fall colors
This is a section of the Great Allegheny Passage (the Northern 150 miles of the 334+ mile bike trail that connects Pittsburgh, PA to Washington DC), with the Southern Part being the C & O Canal Trail. The GAP, as the trail is often called gradually ascends from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD. This video covers thee highest (and possibly the most scenic) portion of the GAP from Meyarsdale, PA in Somerset County to the Mason-Dixon Line & Allegany County, Maryland. In this video I ascend the first long distance railroad grade in the United States. (The trail is the path taken by the former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) which began in 1828 (running from Baltimore, Maryland to Wheeing West Virginia on the Ohio River). Later, in 1852 a branch was built to connect Pittsburgh. The rail lines for both the Western Maryland Line, and the B & O Line began to cut services in the 1960's due economic conditions. Portions the train lines that covered what is now the GAP operated until 1991 serving some coal mines. A few miles outside of Meyarsdale (elevation 1,988) the trail crosses the Salisbury Viaduct (a large railroad bridge) that can be seen prominently from US 219. From there the trail continues up to the Eastern Continental Divide (2,392'). The trail then begins to descend steeply. At elevation 2351' you enter the Big Savage Tunnel (3,294.6') or 1.0042 km long. This former railroad tunnel was used from 1912 to 1975 and is named after the Savage Mountain (that it passes through), which in turn is named after John Savage (a 1700's era Surveyor). The Big Savage Tunnel fell into disrepair until 2005 when a 12 Million Dollar 3 year restoration reopened the tunnel for recreational use of bicyclists and hikers. This completed opened the full 334 miles of continuous bike trail open to hikers and bicyclists from DC to Pittsburgh, PA. Note- The trail is a great place to cross country ski in the winter, but the tunnel is likely to be closed). After emerging from the Eastern side of the Tunnel, it is a short ride to a monument, and line on the ground (the state line is an actual line several feet wide), representing the Mason-Dixon Line (one of the most famous lines in American History), separating Pennsylvania from Maryland (although the line appears to be extended into West Virginia, where it separates the Northern Panhandle from the rest of the Mountain State. Delaware was also defined by a portion of the Mason Dixon Line. Thomas Mason and Jeramiah Dixon completed their survey of the Mason Dixon line in 1767. The line is 39 degrees 43 minutes North latitude (and curiously is the same latitude as Denver, Colorado). The Mason Dixon Line also represents a cultural Boundary with Pennsylvania in the North, (& Maryland and Delaware in the South). Virginia was what is now present day West Virginia, so that would have been the South as well, at least until West Virginia broke off of Virginia in 1863 at which point West Virginia is considered my many to be in the South, but associated with the North during the Civil War. The ride back includes some time lapses, and clip, where I ride my bike through the Big Savage Tunnel (but the video is played backwards). I also read some historical markers. Throughout the video you will see several different types of mile markers. They appear to represent different measurement systems used by various railroads historically. I hope that you enjoy the video, and my attempt at describing the history. I am not a historian, but am fascinated by geographical, cultural and natural history. I will attempt to correct any glaring errors in any historical information presented in the description. I will not likely re-edit the video since it represents my adventure and a snapshot in time and American History that happens to be 11-2018.
Bike Packing The Great Allegheny Passage 2019
This video is about our 2019 Great Allegheny Passage Bicycle trip from Cumberland Maryland to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
GAP Trail - Cumberland, MD to Rockwood, PA
Day 5 of our C&O Canal and Great Allegheny Passage bike ride - June 2015.
Biking the Great Allegheny Passage: Day 1
The #greatalleghenypassage is 150 miles of beautiful rail-trail from Pittsburgh, Pa., to Cumberland, Md. Ride along with Bike the GAP on Day 1 of the Great Allegheny Passage self-guided tour, taking riders from Pittsburgh to West Newton.
Visit bike-the-gap.com read about our self-guided tour packages.
Turn on closed captions if trail audio is unclear.
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Great Allegheny Passage By Bicycle - Bike Camping
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The Great Allegheny Passage stretches for 150 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cumberland, Maryland.
And for the truly adventurous, it connects directly to the C&O Canal Towpath taking you all the way into Washington, D.C. by adding another 185 miles.
It is a bucket list trail for adventure cyclists around the world.
I’m lucky enough to have this trail network basically in my backyard and I am even luckier to have a group of adventure cyclists in my bike club that enjoys bike camping.
I put together a spring bike camping trip each year alternating between the canal towpath and GAP.
This will be my second year leading this trip on the GAP.
And lucky for us too as the spring rains in the Mid Atlantic really did quite a bit of damage to the canal towpath.
They are pretty good at putting it back together and identifying detours but that wasn’t something we needed to worry about for this trip.
The surface of the GAP is well groomed, hard packed gravel and it holds up to whatever mother nature can throw at it.
This year’s trip consisted of a travel day to Pittsburgh on a Thursday and setting out on the trail Friday morning.
Our plan was to travel from Pittsburgh to Cedar Creek Trekker Campground on Day 1, then on to Ohiopyle State Park on Day 2 with our last camping night in Rockwood at Husky Haven on Day 3. Day 4 would see us cross the Continental Divide and glide downhill from there into Cumberland.
Carpools and travel plans found everyone in Cumberland on time for our shuttle service. It is easy to park in Cumberland for the long weekend, but it is a good idea to call the town office and let them know ahead of time.
Our shuttle carried 11 people, bikes and all our gear to Pittsburgh in just a couple of hours and dropped us right at the door on the Holiday Day Inn Express on 10th Street in Southside.
We took the afternoon to enjoy Pittsburgh hitting a local taproom and a few of us set out to see Pittsburgh by bike in the late afternoon visiting Point State Park, the official beginning of the GAP, and crossing the Hot Metal Bridge.
There are many ways to travel along the GAP – bike camping is just one option. This trail travels through many small towns that cater to the traveling cyclist.
It is pretty easy to credit card camp the whole way. Food and restaurants are plentiful and with proper planning you would only need to carry a few changes of clothes and maybe some rain gear.
But that’s not how we roll.
It’s all camping and river baths for this group – well, we did have showers available on Day 2 so it wasn’t all roughing it.
You will find several hiker biker campsites along the trail all managed by volunteers of the regional trail corporation.
Dravo campground is at mile marker 122.
Cedar Creek Trekker campground is at mile marker 110.
Roundbottom campground is at mile marker 99 and has room for more than 100 tents – that’s a huge camping area!
Connellsville campground is found at mile marker 89 and is very close to the town.
They all offer ample space for tents and offer varying levels of services – but none offer showers.
Like I said, it is not hard to find food or water along the trail as it runs through many small towns but it is not a bad idea to fill your water bottles each chance you get.
Day 2 for us found us headed to Ohiopyle State Park. I can say I would not recommend this for cyclists.
It is a half mile rock trail with over 350 feet of elevation gain up the state park. If you are unfortunate like us on this trip and rain sets in you are isolated at the top of the hill with few services besides bathrooms and water. All the action is in Ohiopyle proper!
Instead I would say push on to the campground at Confluence with a stopover in Ohiopyle. If you pushed on Day 1 to make Roundbottom you would find yourself in Ohiopyle right at the lunch window and you would easily make Confluence.
Ohiopyle is a great little town with plenty of shops and a park running alongside the falls.
In Confluence the GAP stops following the Yockegheny River and picks up the Casselman River.
Day 3 had us headed to Husky Haven Campground in Rockwood. For those of you unfamiliar, the campground is on one side of the Casselman River and the office and bathrooms on the other.
It’s really no big deal and the campground is incredibly well maintained and pleasant. Don’t forget your earplugs – the train runs all night and blows the horn passing through town. You will swear it is about to enter your tent.
Day 4 is a steady climb for the first half from Rockwood up to the Eastern Continental Divide.
The rest of the trip, all 20 some odd miles, is basically downhill from there. You will pass through the Savage Tunnel so make sure to bring a light for this piece of the trail, plus a couple of smaller tunnels before you scream into Cumberland and your trip is done.
Great Allegheny Passage Frostburg, MD to Cumberland, MD
Dad and I riding on the Great Allegheny Passage from Frostburg to Cumberland, this is just portions not the whole entire ride because the file would be huge and I could never be patient enough to have it upload that long. We usually do this ride in an hour or a little over. This video is of some of the scenic views on the tail. One of the overlooks in between Mt. Savage and Corriganville, MD and then the Brush Tunnel and what we call this part in Cumberland, the S turns all the way to where the C&O Canal connects with the GAP, so now I can say I have connected the trails. I hope you enjoy. Sometime this fall I should have a video of Deal to Frostburg.
Great Allegany Passage Bike Trip: Pittsburgh, PA to Cumberland, MD
This slide tour shows a trip along the Great Allegany Passage bike trail with Wilderness Voyageurs from PIttsburgh, PA to Cumberland, MD on June 4 - 7, 2017. This is a rails to trails trip of 145 miles with daily rides of 32 - 42 miles. The grade is easy to moderate for most of the eastbound trip and the trail condition is excellent along the entire route (kudos to the consortium of trail clubs who keep it up!). The peddling eastward is uphill for about 120 miles and downhill for about 25 at the end. Pause the elevation slides to get a sense of the change in slope along the route. This is not a particularly scenic trip when the leaves are on the trees. The higher elevations around Meyersdale, PA will be cooler longer in the spring and earlier in the fall - check the weather forecast. (Winter is bitter.) There are towns along the way with limited accommodations. Be sure to book ahead. For aggressive riders, this could be a two day trip; for normal riders, four days is a good pace.
You can reverse this trip and go from Cumberland, MD to PIttsburgh, PA. If you do, you should consider taking the scenic rail line from Cumberland to Frostburg (about 15 miles) and then beginning your trip from Frostburg. This is a pleasant start and eliminates about half of the uphill climb. During my trip, more riders went westward than eastward.
At Cumberland, you have the option of taking the C&O Canal towpath eastward to Washington, DC. It is a national park that runs 184 miles and is completely level (except for short drops at the locks). It is more scenic than the GAP as it runs through the mountains, but a bit boring when it doesn't. It has more riders than the GAP. Cumberland has plenty of accommodations and a visitor center for the canal and scenic rail line at the zero mile point on the edge of downtown.
The Wildnerness Voyageurs group is based in Ohiopyle, PA which is the midpoint on the GAP trip. You meet there, van shuttle to just outside Pittsburgh to begin, and then shuttle from Cumberland back to Ohiopyle when finished. Van meets the group each day.
C&O Trail Bike Trip (Cumberland MD to Fort Frederick State Park)
Video log of my solo bike camping trip on part of the C&O towpath trail in 2012.
The Great Allegheny Passage: Deal PA to Frostburg MD
This is a video of the landmarks that you come in counter with on this end of the trail. Half mile past the Deal Trailhead you will come up on the Eastern Continental Divide which marks the highest elevation on the GAP along with the split of the Chesapeak Bay & Gulf of Mexico watersheds. The next is about a mile from that is the Big Savage Tunnel and the overlook on the other side of it. You also come across the Mason-Dixon line (Pennsylvania/Maryland) State line, the Borden tunnel to finally rolling into the Frostburg Depot trailhead. Amazing scenery and views, just wish the Fall foliage would have been nicer out there though. I have edited out the sound because when dad and I were having conversations we were talking about personal things that friends probably wouldn't want their names mentioned online, plus it could give away to more personal info that I don't wanna share online. I hope you enjoy the video!
Bike Packing The C&O Canal Path 2019
Quick video of our 2019 bicycle tour of The C&O Canal Path. Washington D.C. to Cumberland Maryland.
Rolling Into Cumberland, Maryland...A Beautiful Mountain Town
Thanks for watching
High drama on the Great Allegheny Passage
Oh dear mother hen. Amazing survival. No animals were harmed in the filming of this. However, we came upon this brood immediately after a hawk attack had reduced their number by one.
bicycling the C&O Canal, part 8
I reach the end of the of the C&O Canal Towpath in Cumberland Maryland, in this video I visit many of the hiker biker camp sites along the trail and conduct an interview with a fellow perimeter tour bicyclist (thanks Charlie!). In Cumberland I enjoyed browsing at a book store down town (The Book Center)
and drank lots of good coffee at Cafe Mark
I'm headed to Frostburg MD along the Great Allegheny Passage
The best/fastest wifi signals in Cumberland are found at The Cafe in Martin's Grocery Store or (and maybe slightly faster) at the Public Library
this video filmed with Flip UltraHD video camcorder, 4gb internal memory,
edited with Windows Movie Maker Live on an HP Mini 210 running Windows 7 and uploaded at the Cumberland Public Library
the music on this video was created and performed by Dan O'Connor.
He allows his music to be used for video projects such as mine
and I am grateful for the wonderful musical accompaniment his
music provides
Dan O'Connor
The Bump Jump
Please visit his website at
A snake on the Great Alleghany Passage Trail.
Allegany County Library, Cumberland, Maryland, USA, Jun 2011
Ausführlicher Reiseführerbeitrag:
Allegany County Library
31 Washington Street
Cumberland, MD 21502
USA
Tel.: +1 (301) 777 1200
Fax: +1 (301) 777 7299
Email: washingtonstlibrary@allconet.org
Homepage: alleganycountylibrary.info/contentpages.asp?loc=116
Biking: Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath (Pittsburgh to Washington DC)
We rode our bicycles from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington DC. We started in Pittsburgh on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) and rode southeast to Mile 0 in Cumberland, MD (backwards according to the mile markers). The trail follows the scenic Youghiogheny and Casselman rivers. We then picked up the end of the C&O Canal Towpath (in Cumberland) and followed the Potomac River to mile 0 in Georgetown, Washington DC (backwards again per the mile markers). There were so many great sites to see along the way. It was truly a beautiful ride full of history. Hope you enjoy the video.
GAP Trail PA to MD
This Video is pretty much for personal interest. Not a descriptive video about the GAP trail...
If Anything you can get an idea of what the trail looks like along the way...
Cumberland Narrows
East Rail Productions
The Cumberland Narrows is a water gap in western Maryland in the United States, northwest of Cumberland. Wills Creek cuts through the central ridge of the Wills Mountain Anticline at a low elevation here between Wills Mountain to the north and Haystack Mountain to the south. The National Highway, the CSX Railroad's Keystone Subdivision, Wills Creek, the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, and the Great Allegheny Passage all pass through this narrow valley. I took this video while bicycling and driving thru the Narrows.
Bright Wish, Heartwarming, Luminous Rain, Midday Dance
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Allegany County, MD - The Mountains Are Calling
Welcome to Allegany County, the Mountain Side of Maryland.
The natural beauty of this region is unparalleled. Allegany County features 60,000 acres of public wildlands, with one out of every four acres being public land. Outdoor recreation enthusiasts, you will find your haven with Rocky Gap State Park, Green Ridge State Forest, the majestic Potomac River, the C & O Towpath, and the Great Allegheny Passage, which Bicycling Magazine named “Top Rail Trails Every Cyclist Should Ride.”
A vibrant and successful arts community. Allegany County has gained a well-deserved reputation as a regional arts destination with flourishing Arts and Entertainment districts, a rich theatre base, and the second-largest bluegrass festival in the country, DelFest, which calls Allegany County home.
History and heritage lives here. Enjoy three centuries of American history from George Washington’s Headquarters to the start of the country’s first federally-funded road, the National Road, and from Maryland’s first certified heritage area to the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, which by the way, is one of USA Today’s “Top 10 Railroad Destinations in the Country!”
So, no matter the reason, let us welcome you to our beautiful part of the state. The mountains are calling!