In another article hanging on the wall, “Mom” says her secret is to use less sugar than the recipe calls for so the fruit flavor can shine through. One of her employees says she grows most of the ingredients for her fillings. They bake about 100 pies per day on a weekend.
Buy a whole pie, or by the slice. I went for an almond amaretto chess pie. Delicious!
Lots of choices, and benches outside to sit on.
This town is a great stop for cyclists, whether on the East Coast Greenway or Adventure Cycling’s U.S. Bicycle Route 1, part of a developing network of urban, suburban and rural routes. Saw some signs (and a long-distance cyclist loaded with panniers heading up a hill just before Occoquan).
Oh, there’s the wonderful Mount Vernon Trail that we took for the first quarter of the ride or so and that gets packed on weekends. And there are wide sidepaths that you wouldn’t expect to find along some busy roads in the middle of suburban sprawl.
(That’s part of the sprawl, not the sidepaths)
But there are other places that are just awful. One road we needed to cross only had pedestrian cross buttons on the side we needed to get to. In another spot, we walked our bikes through one construction site rather than take the road. (I think they were both widening the road and adding a sidepath that will become part of the East Coast Greenway route, so there’s at least that.) I’m not talking about some of the other nasty bits, and governments haven’t yet installed East Coast Greenway signs.
Yes, our bikes turned into a mess. Our wheels picked up the red clay soil, which was then blocked by our brakes. Our wheel rims were a mess. We cleaned them off as best we could with road trash and poked at the mud clumps with sticks.
One rider tried this:
And this:
The rain didn’t clean off everything, so the Comfort Inn in Dumfries brought out a hose for us:
My cycle computer says 313 miles so far, with another 30 or so to go.
How I could have used the East Coast Greenway when I biked from Alexandria to Annapolis as part of my cross-country ride in 2000!
How I could have used the East Coast Greenway when I biked from Alexandria to Annapolis as part of my cross-country ride in 2000!
Back then, we couldn’t get a bike map of greater Washington D.C. and advice on the best route out of town. I remember riding on some fairly large roads, though traffic wasn’t bad. (I remember the two flats and the wet weather most clearly).
But this time…
I think Day 5 was even better than Day 4. Traffic was pretty light on our route out of Annapolis and included neighborhood streets and trails. Traffic stayed light and we kept hitting more trails as we got closer to D.C. Incredibly, if we weren’t on trails, we were on residential roads. Given the gridlock you see in D.C. (I mean the traffic kind, not the political kind), it was stunning how easy it was to get to the National Mall.
So here’s to the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, the Anacostia Tributary Trail/Northeast Branch Trail and the Northwest Branch Trail, the Metropolitan Branch Trail and of course the Mount Vernon Trail for the last leg into Alexandria.
I hope Annapolis and/or Anne Arundel County gets recognized as a bike-friendly community soon.
I hope Annapolis and/or Anne Arundel County gets recognized as a bike-friendly community soon because the local advocacy group, BikeAAA, did a great job organizing our happy hour, getting some politicians to attend and getting them to proclaim Wednesday as East Coast Greenway Day in the city and county.
Now Anne Arundel County is about to get a “Complete Streets” policy. Communities across the country are adopting these policies, which basically say the roadway and right of way is for all users of all ages, not just motorists. So that means thinking about bike lanes and sidewalks (and hopefully adding them). There’s an out in all these things, of course, but having the policy on the books sets the tone for planners, traffic engineers and developers.
Baltimore has a trail system that gets cyclists downtown, around the inner harbor and then south using the Jones Falls Trail, the Fallsway, the Gwynns Falls Trail, the Middle Branch Trail, the BWI Trail and the B&A Trail.
I understand more about why Baltimore is a bicycle-friendly community and Maryland is ranked seventh among the states for bike-friendliness by the League of American Bicyclists.
Baltimore has figured out a trail system that gets cyclists downtown, around the inner harbor and then south. That’s pretty amazing for a large city.
It’s not always pretty and it could use some better signage in spots, but given that the trails (multi-use paths, sometimes just wide sidewalks, sometimes out-of-the-way roadways, like the one past an incinerator, and switching from side to side of the road in spots) came after the city, it’s impressive how officials got the Jones Falls Trails to connect to the Fallsway to the Gwynns Falls Trail to the Middle Branch Trail.
While we didn’t see Camden Yards, we did see the stadium where the Ravens play (photo courtesy of Melinda):
And once we were out of Baltimore County and in Anne Arundel County, we were on part of the 11-mile BWI Trail that loops around BWI airport and connects to the 13.3-mile Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, a straight line of asphalt that got busier and busier as we got closer to Annapolis. And an ice cream shop or two along the way. Bliss!
Police officers on bikes rode with some of the ECG riders along the BWI Trail (courtesy of jackbikes.org)
But Annapolis, what were you thinking when you put the World War II memorial on a large grassy section between two northbound and two southbound lanes of traffic? How accessible to visitors is that?
Riding a horse on a state road and on the BWI Trail.
What we saw on the BWI Trail on Wednesday:
Horse and rider passing cyclists on the BWI Trail
The light rail tracks are behind me, and roads for cars aren’t far away. Then there’s a bunch of us on the trail.
We first came across this young woman and her horse on Maryland 170 (also known there as North Camp Meade Road) as we all had to cross a not-busy on-ramp to Interstate 695. When we came across her the second time, she said she had taken the horse to her house about a 30 minute walk away – just because – and was now taking her back to the stable.
No stranger than our group riding 325 miles, I guess.
The food find of the trip? We came across Mom’s Apple Pie Bakery about two blocks off the route in Occoquan, Virginia. It made a list of the South’s best pies a few years back, and can claim a visit by Michelle Obama.
Exploring by bicycle 