Day 2: Little Pool HBCS to Huckleberry Hill HBCS

May 20, 2023

SIGNS OF LIFE BEGAN TO BECOME APPARENT in our campsite around dawn, between 0500 and 0600. One by one the overnight denizens of the Little Pool hiker biker campsite emerged from their nylon cocoons and stumbled blearily into the early morning light. We congregated around the picnic table and set up our respective camp stoves to hear water for coffee and breakfast.

It was interesting to observe that oatmeal seems to be the preferred camp breakfast: I think everyone had brought some. Mine was adorned with raisins and supplemented with a bagel topped with peanut butter. And of course we all had coffee as well. Although I disdain it at home, in the name of simplicity I use instant coffee and powdered creamer when bike camping. It gets the job done and really isn't all that bad: not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Wil had brought actual ground coffee and a small espresso press, which he put to good use.

Unlike yesterday , where there had been no threat of rain, today we expected a wetting sometime in the afternoon or evening. A front was due to pass by sometime between 2 and 5, reaching Little Pool by 2 and Huckleberry Hill later on. With that in mind we got going a little earlier than we had on Friday, hitting the trail by about 0830.

Yesterday's ride had taken a bit of the edge off, leaving me with vaguely stiff and sore legs and decidedly tender saddle contact points. I'd have preferred to start on the paved WMRT but it wasn't to be, so I simply chose to alternate seated and standing pedaling on a regular basis. That actually worked pretty well, but when Wil offered me a packet of "chamois butter" an hour or two into the day's ride I gratefully accepted.

Since it follows the Potomac the canal slopes slightly downhill if you're traveling downstream, but not so steeply as to be really perceptible. Indeed, at many points my GPS told me that I was actually climbing at between 0.1 and 0.5 percent, but I took that to be a reflection of its inability to really determine the slope accurately in light of its negligible tilt coupled with a fairly dense tree canopy overhead.

Wil had chosen a pizza place in Williamsport MD as our lunch destination. He's enjoyed eating there before, and why not: they've been selected as making the Best Pan Pizza in the country. Apparently that's not just marketing hype but is based on actual contest results.

Proof: a facsimile of the award that Rad Pan received after winning the Pan Division of the 2022 Pizza Expo. Pizza production is done in affiliation with a local microbrewery, with which it shares space.

This is still wrong though, on so many levels. :)

His memory of the portion sizes proved faulty though, and we found ourselves with an embarrassment of riches after we had stuffed ourselves to the point of being uncomfortably full. There was still almost a half pizza left between us from what we'd eaten for lunch, to go along with the entire pie that Wil had gotten for dinner this evening. After a bit of head-scratching we managed to get the unwieldy pizza box safely lashed onto his bike, but it suffered somewhat for being at the bottom of a pile of gear.

At midday the skies showed no hint of clouding over or threatening rain, but we nevertheless kept a wary eye on the heavens and our weather apps as we trundled downstream. The expected arrival time of the wet weather at our destination was between 4 and 5 in the afternoon, which meant that we should probably arrive dry and in time to get set up provided that we didn't dawdle excessively along the way.

A stretch of towpath had to be replaced several years ago due to flood-related damage after heavy rains coincided with rapid snow melt in an early spring. The replacement is a more durable concrete surface.

Along the canal, although in this section the canal boats used the Potomac itself rather than a man-made waterway.

Comin' through: the Tennessee riders leapfrog us along the way.

We made it to Huckleberry Hill before the rain and wasted little time getting our tents set up and our gear under cover. It's a good thing we did, too: within a few minutes the skies opened up. The other riders we'd been with gradually filtered in, wet and dirty but mostly in good spirits and accepting that being so is sometimes a part of the cycle touring experience.

The rain only lasted for a couple hours, which afforded me time for a pleasant nap. Afterward I emerged from my tent and joined the congregation of riders around a small campfire. We chatted for a while then it was off to bed and several hours in la la land.

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Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 122 miles (196 km)

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