Bike Trails, VA. Virginia's Washington and Old Dominion (W & OD) Trail

 
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Last updated 01/16/2016

Raw file: W & OD Trail.gpx (420.17 KB)

My wife, brother and I are bicycle enthusiasts who enjoy riding the ever increasing number of rail / canal trails mostly in the Northeastern US. We also do volunteer work for NOAA by recovering US Coast & Geodetic Survey Benchmarks. We often combine these hobbies while trail riding.
Unlike geocaching, benchmark hunting serves a valuable purpose by providing NOAA with updates on the condition of their 700,000+ benchmarks across the Unites States. Information on Benchmarks is available here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/.

We have been riding these trails for over 10 years now and I decided to share some of the .GPX files I’ve created. Of the hundreds of trails available in this part of the country, I selected these for their quality, scenic beauty, lack of excessive grades or hazardous terrain and overall riding or hiking enjoyment.

These files contain parking area locations and information, tracks for trails and waypoints for significant features such as road crossings, bike shops, campgrounds, points of interest and USCGS benchmarks along or near the trail. All waypoints include elevation data for use in plotting trail slope and planning outings. These files were compiled using a variety of resources including:

www.traillink.com/

NOAA - http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/

Garmin’s Mapsource & Basecamp software

USCGS Topographic Maps. Available legally at no cost for many States here:

http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/

Google Earth

Garmin’s Birds Eye Imagery

Various Internet & Print resources

Personal Knowledge

Washington & Old Dominion Regional Park website:

http://www.nvrpa.org/park/w_od_railroad/

Friends of the W&OD Trail website:

http://www.wodfriends.org/

This file is Virginia’s Washington & Old Dominion (W & OD) Trail, a 45 mile long, nine foot wide paved trail which follows the right of way of the defunct Washington and Old Dominion railroad. It runs from Purcellville southeast to Arlington and passes through the suburbs of many Virginia towns along the way.

This popular, well maintained trail is used by hikers, bikers, skiers and even horseback riders who follow the parallel W&OD gravel bridle path. Many use the trail to commute from the Virginia suburbs into the DC metro area.

Anyone interested in Benchmark hunting can obtain detailed data sheets for each mark by going here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_pid.prl The PID is the waypoint name symbolized by the color coded cube icons. Green= Recovered within the last 10 years. Blue= No recent recovery but set in a massive structure which still exists. Red= Likely missing or reported destroyed.

Free, legal, 24K and 100K topo map downloads for the states with these trails are available here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/

Segments of these maps covering the above trails can be loaded into many older handheld GPS receivers with limited memory by using Garmin’s Mapinstall program available here:

http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3291

I’ll post more trail files as I update and clean them up. I always enjoy conversing with fellow bike trail enthusiasts so please feel free to contact me with comments, questions, inclusions or revisions. – Enjoy!

****** UPDATE 1/16/16 ******

Added 191 waypoints for various trail points of reference
Updated and added parking area information
Minor track realignment in 8 locations

POI Packages

Change History

  • charlesd45 - Jan 17, 2016
    WAV

  • bdhsfz6 - Jan 16, 2016
    Added 191 waypoints Updated Parking info realigned track in 8 locations