Biking the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal from Pittsburgh to D.C. [Washington Post]

View Photo Gallery —  A look at some of the bridges and milestones along the rail system between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Md.

The only sound in the crystalline mountain air was the crunch of our bicycle tires on the crushed limestone path. We’d pedaled around a bend, leaving behind the frothing Youghiogheny River and its whitewater rafters. Now, as we paused to split an orange, my husband and I looked down the path ahead of us, through the springtime trees just beginning to leaf out. The morning sun slanting between their narrow trunks striped the trail with parallel bars of light and shadow.

“Look,” Rick said suddenly. “What does that remind you of?” I saw what he meant, and laughed: “It’s the train tracks!”

The shadows formed a perfect echo of the long-abandoned railroad that once ran along this path, transporting coal and timber for western Pennsylvania’s thriving steel industry. Today, those tracks are gone, replaced by one of the finest achievements of the nation’s growing rail-trail network: the 141-mile Great Allegheny Passage, or GAP.

[continue reading at Washington Post]