30 Days of Biking Day 25: Maryland Monday

The family and I were on our way back to Ohio yesterday afternoon, but an ailing child stopped us in our tracks. She hadn't been feeling well in the morning, so Rae and I agreed that if it got worse throughout the day that we would stop and find a hotel room on the way. The worst case scenario happened, and so we found ourselves shacked up in Hagerstown, MD for the night.

As of this writing, the child is fully recovered and should be fine to go back to school tomorrow. In hindsight, we probably didn't need to spend the night, but better safe than sorry. I'm sure you've all been in a car while feeling ill and it's definitely no picnic.

From every crisis, there arises an opportunity. While the family slept in this morning, I took an early morning ride around the area. This shouldn't surprise you in the least:

I checked the map yesterday evening and noticed the multi-use trail you see above, which was just a quarter mile from our hotel. It loosely connects the mall area where our hotel was located with downtown Hagerstown about 3 miles away. I didn't go quite all the way to downtown, but I did turn around at a pretty neat little place:

The Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum is one of those places I would totally visit if I found myself randomly spending the day in this town. I'm a pretty big history buff, so I love seeing stuff like this:

The trolley is apparently the last trolley to ever operate in their county, a reminder of much simpler times. I'm not sure if we'll ever find ourselves here again, but I'd love to actually go to the museum if we do have a return visit.

From there, I headed back toward our hotel. I spotted this pretty cool mural advertisement for a local bar on the way:

And finally, a Moped shoppe:

I've never seen a store that specialized in Mopeds before. There was a scooter store in Philly, but that's not as cool so...

After that, I picked up the mixed use path again. The scenery was mostly warehouses and distribution centers that aren't very photogenic. Actually, it reminded me a lot of some parts of Grove City. Nonetheless, it was a solid 7-mile round trip ride and a great way to start the morning before hopping back in the car to complete our journey back to Ohio. I didn't expect to ride a bike in three different states this weekend, but after a very slow start to this month, it appears that the adventures are finally starting to find me again.