Late June is the cusp of change as the bountiful harvest of strawberries begins to wane and the pale blueberries start to darken indicating that they are ready for the table and the mouth. This year’s strawberry harvest was poor compared to last year’s as the winter claimed at least 70 percent of our plants […]

While many of us look to put together highly planned gardens with everything in just the right spot, sometimes random plantings can be the most rewarding particularly when they find themselves in inhospitable places. I was biking the other morning and was nearing a new Publix that is going up in Islamorada. There used to […]

Between the morning dew and the sun, which has dropped below the tree line, my lawn never dries out. After Labor Day it is perpetually slick making it an ideal home for slugs that slither and frogs that hop between clumps of slowly growing greenery. The strands of grass are bent over, rarely able to […]

It’s a beautiful cloudless day and after a quick ferry ride across the Potomac, we are ready and excited to be finishing our trip. Though the trail is 335 miles long we figure that after today’s 38 miles we will have biked somewhere between 350 and 360 miles over our 8 days on the GAP […]

We leave Shepherdstown on another perfect day with no clouds in the sky. As we cross the Potomac to rejoin the trail, old bridge supports are to our right supporting only vegetation rather than a means by which the river can be crossed. A solitary fisherman pushes his skiff out from the West Virginia shore […]

This area of the United States has many tiny jewels of history. That was no where more apparent when we finished our day at the towns of Sharpsburg, MD, and Shepherdstown, WV. We first rolled into Sharpsburg on our way to Antietam noticing that nearly every house on Main Street had at least one U.S. […]

Just finished lunch at Captain Benders Tavern and spoke with our trail friends who own a landscaping business in Ohio. They clued us in on what routes not to take so that we could avoid any extra hills during our tour of Antietam. Our goal is to see as much as we can while avoiding […]

Back on our bikes, the trail picks up the features that we have become familiar with. Turtles sunning themselves, in the bright light. Deer running in the canal and crossing the path to get down to the river. Baked ruts of mud requiring care as we roll by. The ride can be difficult to dress […]

After breakfast at the Desert Rose Cafe in Williamsport, a tiny quaint town with well-kept buildings, we were fueled for the day ahead not that we thought it would be a strenuous one. After all, we were told it would be 27 miles from Williamsport to Shepherdstown. And it was along the trail. How tough […]