A Surprisingly Luxe Cycling Trip Through the Rust Belt

You’ll encounter unexpected creature comforts as you pedal along abandoned railways in Pennsylvania and Maryland’s coal and steel country

The Western Maryland Scenic Railroad PHOTO: WMSR FOUNDATION

I’M A SUCKER for a post-industrial landscape. Unspoiled nature moves me as much as it does the next person, I guess, but give me a rusted-out mill or abandoned railroad tracks with my green and pleasant vista and I’m captivated. Suddenly the scene becomes a story.

So as soon as I learned about the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP), a bike path that winds through 150 miles of historic coal and steel country on derelict grades of the Western Maryland Railway and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad, I started hatching a vacation plan. The GAP runs between Cumberland, Md., and Pittsburgh, Penn., and probes parts of Western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania no car can quite reach—places still firmly anchored in another era. Anyway, that’s how I pitched it to my friend Marne when I persuaded her to abandon her family in New York for a week and join me.

I rented a sturdy Trek Verve 3 hybrid bike and saddle bags at Golden Triangle Bike………

Read on……..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-surprisingly-luxe-cycling-trip-though-the-rust-belt-1444158477