Back in the summer of 2020, my dear friend Randy and I were looking for something we could do outdoors and hang out. Randy suggested we go down the C&O Canal and explore one of the many caves along the path. We agreed to bike instead of walk 2 miles down and back but on our excursion, after exploring and being muddied by the small caves, we biked another 20 miles.
We went biking down the towpath a few more times that week and while eating ice cream in the hot July evening, I dumbly said “what if we biked the while thing? How hard could that be?” to which Randy excitedly explained that he always wanted to do that. We started kind of planning for when we could go and how long it would take. Next thing I knew, it was August, we had both taken the week off work, and my poor mother was driving the two of us to Cumberland MD at 6am.
Our first stop that afternoon was in Oldetown and was the most memorable part of the trip for me.
After arriving in our first town, ready for lunch, we learned there is a restaurant called the Schoolhouse Kitchen. As we are biking the short distance through town to the restaurant, I start getting strange daja vu. I realize, that I was being reminded of a movie called Children Of The Corn. We got to the Schoolhouse Kitchen, which is located in a closed off section of an old highschool and after starting at the 30ft “Trump 2020” sign for a moment, we ventured in.
Let me paint a picture for you…
The restaurant was a small, concrete wall room with those old fabric covered dividers pulled across to make what was once the gym into the school cafeteria (now a restaurant). On one side of the room were folding tables with mismatched plastic tables cloths and the other side had shelves for convenience items and the essentials for sale.
They only accepted cash and there was an ATM in the corner. After we placed our order with the darling woman that waited on us, Randy went to go pull cash out and nearly jumped when the dial tones went off. The ATM had dial up internet. We giggled about it for a moment and looked around the odd room. Business was booming between the locals and the bikers stopping for lunch.
Wrapped along the very top of the walls were class pictures from 1939 until 2000. The waitress explained that 2000 was the last class before the school closed. each picture has no more the 30 kids, most being between 10 and 20. We took lots of odd pictures.
After eating some fantastic chicken fingers, we ventured off…
The bathrooms were down a hall into the rest of the school and Randy took it upon himself to wander a little further. I did the same. One room was full of old cars that had been worked on at some point. One dimly lit hall was lined with random antiques. After spotting the oldest basinet I have seen, I stopped looking too hard down that hall incase a ghost child decided to come out and play.
I have no great big dramatic thing that happened here but the entire experience was unique, fun, and in some ways unsettling.
After our lunch, we continues on the trail, making up backstories of the highschool and odd things we were sure have happened in that town. We agreed we needed to visit again and explore further to see what the town is really like. The rest of the day we spent biking until we stopped to eat our ramen and settle in for the night.