Quiet camping AND motorcycles? Yep

My friend Paul Pressy who was so nice to share his experiences on the road to California and back to Pennsylvania was on the road again recently, though this trip was a little less ambitious:

“This time not so far, almost like a trip to Pittsburgh, less than 200 miles in the middle of Ohio,” Paul wrote in an e-mail.

 He went a camping trip to a park he’s gone to for the past four years, hidden in the countryside just north of Columbus.

“It’s called Mount Gilead State Park, ‘a quiet, small park centrally located in the state of Ohio.  Picnicking, fishing and hiking can be enjoyed year-round at this beautiful location,’ (as its Website states) but that’s not why we come every year,” Paul wrote.

He was off to see the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days, held July 25-27 this year, featuring every type of racing, parts swap-meet, ride in on Vintage bikes, and test drive on some of the most powerful bikes money can buy, Paul said.

You never know what you might find at the swap meet.

“It’s the Expo of bike new and old.  My one favorite is the sidecar races.  I seem to always get there when it’s almost over or just doing time trials,” Paul wrote.

 The event isn’t actually held at the state park. It’s actually held at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, which Paul says is also hidden in the countryside.

The Mid-Ohio Race Course may be in the country, but it's easy to spot!

 “Hundreds of thousands come to see the sites and events.  But on Friday night we always come to the ¼ mile dirt track races, it is at the Ashland, Ohio fair grounds, they race bikes that are older than some of the drivers, also they have drivers that are over 70 years old racing against the younger drivers. Most of the bikes are before they built the dirt racing bikes you would see today; they took them off the street and race on oval dirt tracks. 

“As of last year, the Indy race cars come to Mid Ohio. They are something to see race and they are part of the summer of racing, check the web page for the next time they have there races next year at www.midohio.com and I have to say make reservations very early, every hotel fills up,” Pressy said.

You might want to consider Paul’s advice to stay at the state park—it’s not on the “nearby accommodations” list at the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days Website, so it may not be as crowded.

For more information, check the following links:

http://www.amadirectlink.com/vmd/2008/

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks/parks/mtgilead/tabid/772/Default.aspx

 

C&O Canal bike trip an annual event

 

By Christine Haines

 

If you visit Fort Frederick in Big Pool, Md., as suggested in last week’s column, you may come across the C&O Canal towpath like Dr. Richard Birch Jr. did as a young child. 

He declared that he was going to walk it all the way to the end to see where he’d end up. A park ranger dashed his hopes for that day, but piqued his interest for the future, when he informed the youngster that the trail went all the way to Washington D.C. Several years later, 15-year-old Birch convinced his father to let him bike the entire 184.5 miles from Cumberland, Md. to Washington D.C. Ever since his own son turned 12, he’s made it an annual father-son event and expanded it to include other fathers and sons (and sons without their fathers, and men who don’t have sons) for a five-day ride in early summer. The trip never grows old.

“We’ve found some of the stuff from the original building of the canal: an old log cabin that’s fallen in, old railroad tunnels, caves. After 15 trips, last year there were two or three things I’d never seen before,” Birch said.

Birch said one of the best guides to the trail is “184 Miles of Adventure” published by the Boy Scouts. It includes both hiking and biking information along the trail, including side trails. He also recommends the “Towpath Guide to the C&O Canal by Thomas F. Hahn. Both books include canal history and a mile-by-mile guide to things you might see, creating a biking scavenger hunt of sorts.

“The canal goes through Antietam, Harpers Ferry, Fort Frederick, Falling Water—where the Civil War could have ended,” Birch said. “There are a lot of really nice historic things to see.”

Birch said that when he takes groups on the trail he tries to break it into 45-55 miles of biking each day, pacing it so the group can camp at one of the canal hiker-biker rest stops that’s near a restaurant to cut down on the amount of food the group has to carry. There are hiker-biker camp areas every 5-7 miles along the trail, available for free on a first-come basis.

Birch said that while some people bike the trail roundtrip, he usually just goes one way, arranging return transportation from D.C. He suggests preparing for the 184 mile ride with shorter trips prior to setting off on your adventure. Birch said an experienced biker can do the one-way trip in about three days, perfect for a long weekend. The one-way trip offers one other advantage, Birch said.

“It’s downhill all the way from here to D.C.,” Birch said.

Camping in the Keystone State

Camping in the Keystone State

By Christine Haines

When I bought my first tent, my mom told my I was crazy; I told her to think of it as a folding hotel room. It was an awfully small hotel room, just a 6×6 wall tent (I think they were 6″ walls, it was just above getting a pup tent.)

My friends and I went all over the place with that little tent–an Emmy Lou Harris concert in New York, a beach trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and the wilds of Bethany, WV, where we nearly got trampled by a herd of deer. It slept three, if you were good friends and didn’t mind using your packs as pillows. It was actually comfortable for two.

As time went on, I added a bright yellow fly to my old blue and tan tent, just to make sure the rain wouldn’t leak through the old roof, and I remember lying  in it listening for bear at Ohiopyle when I first moved to Fayette County.

My husband and I bought a 10×12 wall tent with a 6′6″ center pole that, along with a queen-size air mattress, became a luxury hotel room as we camped at the Outer Banks and at Myrtle Beach for our honeymoon.

Add two teen-aged stepdaughters and a dining fly and the old pup tent became the equipment tent for family vacations.

Even though my husband’s family had a pop-up camper when he was a kid, we never got into RVing. Instead, we added time periods and added canvas tents suitable for the Revolutionary and Civil War periods. Non-historic camping now generally involved a cabin, and with a little shopping around or a check of state park sites, some good deals are still available.

Pennsylvania state parks generally open their campgrounds from March through late December and the state Website offers a wealth of information about the facilities, the park features and the surrounding area. You can find everything from rustic sites accessible only by foot to lodges that will sleep up to 14 people at the state parks.

 http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateParks/

Information about private campgrounds in the state is also available through various Internet sites, but one comprehensive guide is www.pacamping.com, run by the Pennsylvania Campground Owners Association.