C&O Canal Towpath to Great Falls (MD)

Another pleasant spring day with some sprinkles in the forecast called for an easy 30-mile ride from home to Great Falls on the C&O Canal Towpath.  I’d forgotten how pretty it was last time, or maybe the weather and the light were just better.  It definitely gets better the farther upriver you go, with perhaps the last two miles to the falls being the most scenic.  On May 18, the path was in good condition throughout and only mildly crowded near the falls.

While sipping a coke and eating our sandwiches, a canal boat came by, hauled by mules from the towpath, just like in the golden olden days.  Let’s do it, Kris exclaimed.  After a pair of aggressive Canadian honkers with cute, fuzzy babies chased us from our picnic table (really), we found the ranger and learned that we could ride the boat for an hour for $8.  The workers dressed in period garb and the guide was excellent, telling us of the life of those who worked the canal in the mid-1800s.  As many as 500 canal boats plied the waters back then.  I was struck by how absolutely quiet it was drifting along behind the gentle clopping of the mules.  We entered one of the locks and enjoyed the full rundown of the operation to open and close the gates and move ourselves through.

 

An interesting factoid noted by the guide:  C&O stands for Chesapeake and Ohio, neither of which were ever reached by the canal.  The original dream was to extend the canal all the way to Pittsburgh, which is where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio.  The transit from one watershed to another would seem to have required either some creative engineering or perhaps a secret river that flowed uphill, but the answer, for now, will have to remain a mystery.