Linking Up: Planning Your Traffic Free Bike Trip Between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC [Paperback]

Mary Shaw (Author), Roy Weil (Author), Bill Metzger (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2002

An updated third edition has now (Aug 2007) been published. If you search Amazon for "9780979210815" you wil find it. The trails of the Allegheny Trail Alliance will connect with the C&O Canal Towpath at Cumberland, creating a traffic-free route between Pittsburgh and Washington DC. Although a few gaps in the trail won't be finished for another year or two, there's enough trail on the ground to make an outstanding bike trip. To help you plan this trip -- or a shorter trip along this route -- this book has brought together most of the information that you will need to plan your trip. This Second Edition (May 2002) is now 48 pages and includes all of the information in the first edition and more. All of the detail tables have been updated. In addtion a milage table from and between over 25 trailheads has been added, and a table of restaurants and grocery stores has been added.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Shaw and Roy Weil have canoed, biked, hiked, and XC-skied Western Pennsylvania for over 30 years. Many people have introduced them to trails, and they return the favor by writing guide books. They wrote Linking Up to encourage people to make extended trips on the trail between Pittsburgh and Washington.

They also wrote FreeWheeling Easy in Western Pennsylvania. This guidebook covers the easy traffic-free bicycling and walking trails in and around Pennsylvania west of US219. All of the trails in this 244 page guidebook are free of automobile traffic. Most are on wide smooth gentle paths, rather than rough, steep, undeveloped trails. There are trails for short family outings and trails for multi-day touring.

They also edited the definitive Canoeing Guide to Western Pennsylvania. The guides covers the canoeable waters that run westward out of Pennsylvania via the Ohio River. It includes some streams from neighboring areas, as well, The guide is the result of volunteer effort over the past 30 years by many, many canoeists, working through the Pittsburgh Council, American YouthHostels . It is currently in its eighth edition, covering about 3000 miles of rivers in 470 pages.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the Introduction

So you’re thinking about a bike ride between Pittsburgh PA and Washington DC, and you don’t want to ride in traffic? That’s great! The C&O Canal Towpath has long been a favorite route, especially nice for bicycle camping. Now that the connection to the rail-trails of the Great Allegheny Passage between Cumberland MD and Pittsburgh PA is within reach, the route is even better.

We begin with answers to the questions that people most often ask as they start to think about the trip, followed by suggestions about things to think about as you plan and ideas about itineraries. At the end, we list some of the services and amenities you may find helpful and give a table of distances between towns. With a few exceptions, we include all the services we know about that are within reasonable cycling distance of the trail. If you have a support car you can range farther afield, but other guides provide better coverage of those larger areas than we can possibly hope to.

Trail construction continues, so if you’re looking ahead to a vacation in the next two or three years, you’ll find more trail and smaller gaps.

Product Details

• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Shaw Well Associates; 2 edition (June 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964601486
• ISBN-13: 978-0964601482
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,123,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the essential book, a must-have !, May 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Linking Up: Planning Your Traffic Free Bike Trip Between Pittsburgh and Washington, DC (Paperback)

This is the essential book if you're planning a trip along the Pittsburgh-DC trailway, or any segment. Well written, this is like a visit with an experienced tour guide. The book offers options for various experience levels. You can't go wrong with this!