Historic Hagerstown

Mile 0.  Staring Point

 

We begin our trek in Hagerston, MD.  Home to about 40,000 Marylanders, Hagerstown is one of the largest cities of Western Maryland. Although Hagerstown is gritty, with high unemployment and a lot of people on disability, it has a very involved active church community. County seat of Washington County, Hagerstown is situated on the intersection of Interstates 81 and 70 where it serves as a hub city for major trucking routes. Mack Trucks are built here. Hagerstown is located in the beautiful Cumberland Valley region that provides the local Stonehenge limestone of which may of the fences and older homes are made.

Hagerstown is only 15 minutes north of the C&O Canal National Park, the 184 mile-long  hiking, biking, and camping trail along the Potomac River that stretches from Cumberland MD to Georgetown, a neighborhood of  Washington DC. Up here, the Potomac is a clean and wild. Only two weeks before our motorcycle odyssey began, Aaron, my daughter’s boyfriend, and I caught 7 nice channel catfish here in less than 2 hours. Madeline, my youngest and I, came back yesterday for a few more catfish.  The Potomac also provides fine smallmouth bass, carp, Walleye Pike, and even the occasional Tiger Muskellunge. 

Burnside Bridge at Antietam Battlefield.

Nearby Sharpsburg, MD is home of the Antietam battlefield, where, in September, 1862, twenty-three thousand Union and Confederate soldiers died in the single bloodiest day of battle in US military history--ever!. It was the first Civil War battle to take place on Union soil.  In 2011, over 330,000 people visited the historic site.