Day 4: Cumberland, MD – Rockwood, PA

I took my sweet time getting ready this morning as I wanted to squeeze every dollar out of my expensive hotel room. I left town shortly afternoon and began the long uphill ride to Frostburg.

There was a light rain for the entire hour and a half climb and the temperature was in the high 60s or low 70s. It was pretty much perfect weather.

I never made it into town as I stopped at a little shop on the outskirts for lunch. It was pretty mediocre but it gave me the time to write the entry for the previous day. Speaking of which, I know that some of my writing is rather trite since it is composed primarily of short, matter-of-fact sentences. I need to work on that.

Leaving Frostburg, it was a few more miles uphill, passing into Pennsylvania, until I reached the Eastern continental divide.

Something has been bothering me these past few days. Whenever I come across two people walking side-by-side taking up the whole trail, it always seems to be that I am coming from behind them. In order to proceed I must alert them on my presence. Therein lies the problem – whenever I say ‘on your left’ or some variation thereof, people get extremely startled. If I yell from far away they get scared by the fact I’m yelling. If I wait until I’m close, it’s just as bad.

A strange game. The only winning move us not to play.

So perhaps the correct way to approach the situation is to turn it into a new game. Try and scare these people as much as possible. Maybe they’ll get used to it or die of shock. Either way, problem solved.

In any case, the next 100 miles are all ( extremely slightly) downhill so I proceeded leisurely. The rain had let up but the clouds remained, keeping the temperature down. I called it a day after 44 miles in the town of Rockwood PA which had a nice little restaurant called the Rock City Cafe. The staff was super nice so I would highly recommend it.

Accommodations in Rockwood were both more varied and cheaper than Cumberland. I was sad I had spent so much last night as I vastly prefer spending money on small b&bs instead of large hotel chains. I kept it stingy and stayed in a campground with showers, setting up camp as darkness fell.

Today’s mileage: 48 miles
Total: 242