Day 1 - C & O Canal Bike Tour

On Monday, July 27th, my brother-in-law (Nekee's husband) piled us (Nekee, PlainoldKristi, her husband, and me), our bikes, and our gear into a big van to drive us to Cumberland, Maryland to begin our bike tour. On the way we stopped at Wal-mart and
REI to pick up food and a few extra things. After arriving in Cumberland we ate at the Crabby Pig, got a kick stand for Nekee's bike, loaded up our gear, took a few practice spins on our loaded bikes, and began our tour. Trust me, riding on a loaded bike is quite different than riding without gear.
Above is a picture of the bike gang just before beginning the tour (me, Plainoldkristi, her husband, and Nekee).

Us with our loaded bikes. Check out Nekee's and my yellow Ortlieb panniers (money well spent-especially when your caught in a downpour). These panniers are water proof. We can vouch for that because the last day of the trip we had a downpour.

The trail that we did was 184.5 miles (we rode our bikes a total of 196 miles including all of our off the trail stops). The trail is called the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal trail. Here is a link to get more information about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_and_Ohio_Canal. The picture above is what the trail looked like when we first began the tour. Nice and shady. Occasionally we would see deer dart across the path, turn and look at us, and then dart into the woods. The weather was beautiful!
Plainoldkristi's husband, our tour guide, tire changer (fortunately we didn't have any flats) and biking expert.
A picture of my bike equipped for loaded touring.
Since we got off to a very late start (around 4:00 p.m.) we only rode twenty-five miles and setup camp. This was the view from our campsite. This is a picture of a Lock keeper's house. The Lock keeper would collect tolls and keep records of commerce on the canal.

Our tents set up for the night.

Now for a funny story. When arriving at the totally desolate, in the middle of the woods camp site, and after setting up our tents, Plainoldkristi noticed several piles of animal poop. We thought it could possibly be bear or horse poop. Since none of us have ever seen bear poop we were not positive of what it was. Plainoldkristi's husband was pretty certain that it was horse poop, but we were still not sure. Nekee called her husband to send us some pictures of bear poop on her phone so that we could compare. My cousin who was visiting Nekee's husband and Nekee's husband thought it would be great fun to tell us that the way to tell was to taste a little bit of it and if it tasted grainy it was horse poop and if it tasted like berries it was bear poop. Of course we all declared that we would not taste it, but instead broke the poop apart to discover a lot of hay. The poop was declared to be horse poop, so we decided to stay. However in the night we are pretty sure we heard a bob cat scream close by, and a very rude frog who continually croaked throughout the night.