W e visited family in Alexandria, Virginia, and finished our C&O tour with them, including 16-month old Elena who had a “summer home” in a screened two-wheeled trailer attached to Daddy Alan’s bike. We drove to Fletcher’s Boat House on the Potomac and joined the many residents of the D.C. area seeking water sports and cycling activities. Our group biked upstream to Lock 6, at mile 5.6, where the formal push for the C&O began in 1828. The lockhouse there has been refurbished and is open for overnight guests. A Georgetown family had checked in. This house has all the modern conveniences: running water, indoor toilet, electric stove, dishwasher, fridge, two bedrooms and rocking chairs on the side porch. The visitor center at Georgetown is located along the canal at mile 0.4 in the ground floor of a brownstone. The canal in this section is dramatic, stepping up and up through a flight of locks. In one pool floated the Georgetown , the canal boat formerly used for visitors wishing to experience a canal ride through the locks. The National Park Service can’t afford to re- store it, and private contributions aren’t sufficient to replace it. To end our journey, we walked along Rock Creek to the Tidewater Lock at Milepost 0 and the Potomac River and imagined canalers from the past unloading their wares. Years ago, Charles Kuralt called the C&O “America’s love- liest failure” in one of his On the Road TV segments on CBS. Failure or not, it is indeed lovely, a fascinating history tour and a great adventure for RV campers with bicycles.
Three generations of the authors’ family take a break near Lockhouse 6, one of the more modern canal lockhouses available for overnight stays.
For More Information Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park nps.gov/choh
Three campgrounds allow trailers and small motorhomes up to 20 feet to stay for $10 a night. Thirty-two tent campgrounds are available to hikers and cyclists for free on a first-come, first-served basis. Lockhouses may be rented at canaltrust.org/quarters.
All told, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia have two Coast Classic Resorts, five Coast Deluxe Resorts and 41 Good Sam Parks.
fall 2013 COAST TO COAST 15
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