Ride the GAP Festival Day: Boston PA to Cedar Creek Park and Back - Hopscotching the Great Allegheny Passage Trail 2024 - CycleBlaze

June 8, 2024

Ride the GAP Festival Day: Boston PA to Cedar Creek Park and Back

Heart 0 Comment 0

We fueled up for the 90 minute drive to the Boston PA GAP trailhead with coffee and healthy muffins at Trader's Coffee house and then headed NE. About 20 minutes in we realized we'd left the water bottles in the refrigerator in the cabin we rented - had to stop and pay inflated gas station prices for bottled water.

Heart 0 Comment 0

We signed in for the GAP Day  ride at the tent that the GAP Conservancy set up at the Boston GAP rest stop, where they rewarded us with inch-thick chocolate chip cookies to fuel us for the grueling flat-as-a-pancake 18 mile ride to the celebration at Cedar Creek Park. There wasn't a formal mass start, so we just hopped on the bikes and started heading south/east.

Heart 1 Comment 0

There had been a good amount of rain recently, about 10 miles in the red waterfall was flowing nicely. A few miles later we reached the West Newton Visitor center and the trail traffic started to pick up.

Heart 0 Comment 0

We arrived just as the GAP Fest was starting, signed in and got our tee shirts, a free copy of the excellent GAP Trail guide, a long string of raffle tickets and tickets for free wood-fired pizza from a food truck that smelled great. However, we couldn't resist Mimi's ice cream - huge servings that unfortunately caused us to pass on the wood fired pizza! Forgot to bring a bungee cord but managed to jam the shirts and guidebook into my bar bag. 

The ride back was into a growing headwind but hard to complain when the Strava trip-o-meter showed only 35 feet of climbing over 36 miles!

Heart 0 Comment 0

Today's ride: 36 miles (58 km)
Total: 68 miles (109 km)

Rate this entry's writing Heart 1
Comment on this entry Comment 0