Trails leaving Baltimore, then 14 miles of trail from Greenbelt to Nationals Park.
It’s the last day of our bike adventure from Philadelphia to Washington D.C.
Continue reading “Day 4 of biking from Philadelphia to DC: A 14-mile finale on stunning trails”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.
And it’s doing more. It looks like this federal grant for bike-ped infrastructure in South Baltimore will improve the East Coast Greenway as well.
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!
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:
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.
Exploring by bicycle 