European Sandwiches and Coffee sounds like a generic name for a cafe. Its proprietor is Azerbaijani, if a couple of tchotchkes in his restaurant are any indication. I’ve had a late start, because I had to tend to some business from my room in the Fairfield Inn just past Mile 0 on the Cumberland, Maryland side of The Great Allegheny Passage trail.
My sandwich is tasty, and the proprietor, perhaps my age, is quiet and attentive, and proud of his little cafe, and the only person working European Sandwiches this cool, cloudy Monday early afternoon.
I return to the Great Cumberland Trail Connection bike shop to buy a rain jacket from the shop’s proprietor, Hutch. Then I ride across the bridge connecting the GAP trail to the C&O Canal trail, just to say I did it.
On the outskirts of town, the GAP trail heading north begins its climb to the Eastern Continental Divide, but it’s not nearly as tough as the guys I met on Day 1 claimed, though I’ve taken the added precaution of planning a short Day 4. My wife, Donna, has booked a room — a suite, it turns out, though at an affordable price — at the Gunter Inn, just 15 miles up the trail in Frostburg, Maryland.
On the outskirts of Cumberland, I stop to talk to two women who live nearby, and are walking a bit of the trail. They ask me how far I’m going. It’s clear, they say, that I’m not a day-tripper, because of my saddlebags.
“You’re riding alone?” one woman asks, when I explain that my erstwhile riding companions (Greg and Tom) are on their way to Washington.
“Be careful, especially in the tunnels.”
Why?
“Bears. And snakes.”
Snakes? I feel like Indiana Jones, now. I can spot a bear and avoid him or her. Snakes in the tunnels?
“Sometimes rattlesnakes.”
Urp. That night in the Gunter Hotel, I make sure to fully charge my headlamp and taillamp. The ride to the hotel turns out to be much tougher than the uphill ride between Cumberland and Frostburg, which takes two hours at a slow, steady pace. On the way, I see the guys from Day 1, riding toward Cumberland. They’re going to get a shuttle back to Pittsburgh from Hutch, of the Great Cumberland Trail Connection. I’m considering trying to find a shuttle from Frostburg, or perhaps one of the bigger towns along the way.
The road up to town is so steep that I walk my bike for the first time on this trip. The Gunter Inn was built in 1897, but in its latest iteration, was rehabbed just last year and turned into a cool, boutique-style hotel, with a tavern called the Gin Mill next to the lobby. The Gin Mill isn’t exactly a speakeasy, in that it also serves food, but that makes it the perfect place for an early cocktail hour and after walking around downtown Frostburg, dinner at 8.
There’s a great independent book shop, Main Street Books a few doors from the Gunter, and down the block, the Palace theater, which is playing Sergio Leone’s 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Few storefronts are empty in this small downtown.
The Gunter locks up bikes in the back alley in a garage, by the way. A bike club that runs the GAP trail monthly always stays at the hotel.
My bartender at cocktail hour was a student at Frostburg State University, who decided to stay here after graduation. Frostburg’s story is similar to other small towns along the GAP trail. It’s a town built on mining and other heavy industries, but it’s doing okay now thanks to the university’s recent growth, and from tourism like the GAP trail riders.
GAP Miles: 16.5
Like Writing a Bicycle 