A wonderful first bicycle tour & great vacation get-away!
I really enjoyed this bicycle tour–my first ever multi-day group ride!
The PA and MD Easy Rider Bike tour was everything that I could have hoped and just about a perfect amount of effort for me to be successful each day, and yet still feel challenged also.
Wilderness Voyageurs’ description of this tour was accurately written to help me select just the right tour in advance for my present skill and fitness level. And their lists of things to pack along with helpful recommended training guidelines were beneficial to me as well.
Once I left town & work in Tennessee (sorry, UT) stress melted away immediately in sync with the nice pace seeing the sights at bike speed along the way on this tour.
Montana and Bekah were most helpful, knowledgeable & personable guides and kept me out of trouble whenever I started out the wrong way by myself–don’t laugh, I am only partly joking here, as that actually happened to me one time, but then I was immediately chased down by one of them by bike to kindly assist and lead me back in the correct direction. (No, You will not have to worry about that on this trip–No One else but me managed to make that type of mistake during our entire three day tour.)
The food was very good, cooked/prepared just for us by our guides several times and on the last night we ate out locally with the group as part of the tour. Trail lunches & snacks were well timed, of healthful variety and always offered with extra quantity too. (I still want that tuna salad recipe someday that had the cranberries included.)
All of the tour riders were interesting, considerate & fun folks with whom I was very glad to chat and occasionally ride along with for short distances as well. Others who cycled a bit faster & stronger took some short side trips along the way as desired and the guides provided insights about those possible side trips as needed.
Mostly I found that riding solo sometimes allowed me to stop & start again whenever desired to take photos of landscapes, people and assorted wildlife here and there along the way and really go at my own pace depending upon what I was seeing or how I was feeling at the time.
It was nice to see such different kinds of things along the way when riding each of the three days and also good to have the experience of riding sections of both the GAP & the C&O towpath. Those trail segments were different from each other and provided new surfaces & some bike ride learning experiences for me too, since typically I ride nearby paved urban Greenways for exercise & enjoyment. As I am not fond of riding with any car traffic, it was great to find that WV offered such tours taking place on rail trails and towpaths to select from, such as the Easy Rider, which did not require me to have to look out for cars.
Overall I can’t wait to try out another one of WV’s tours soon, and I heard that same comment from several other folks in the van as we headed back to Ohiopyle at the end of the last day of the tour.
Rating: Excellent *****
Sharon Hale
Knoxville, TN
The Pennsylvania & Maryland Easy Rider Bike Tour was the first adventure that Sharon has taken with us.