BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

You leave a lot of gaps in your description;

However, the Ghost Town trail would leave you in Ebensburg, PA which is in a reasonably hilly part of PA.

I would attempt to avoid old US 22, but rather ride backroads from Ebensburg to Loretto and back roads to PA53/Gallitzin and then descend via Horseshoe Curve Rd into Altoona and take backroads through Bellwood PA, Tyrone and old US220 all the way to Lock Haven and beyond to pick up the Pine Creek trail.

This would avoid "major" climbing.

I grew up in the Altoona-Ebensburg area and know the roads pretty well.

this is the route i took to ithaca. this will take you on the pine creek trail. http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Pittsburgh-to-Itacha-NY

It is pretty dang hard to get across the

state without hills.

The Pine Creek rail trail was awesome.

You might be better heading north then east.

Altoona area is in the mountains.

after altoona though, its nice and flat in a valley all the way to pine creek.

This might be useful if you haven't checked it out already:

http://www.dot.state.pa.us/bike/web/tour_routes.htm

that site is super useful. it always makes me want to try to circumnavigate the whole state

+1 erok.

I keep thinking about an A north-->Y east-->G south-->V west loop.

On my bike tour last year, it was kind of

funny how often I ended up on the routes,

just randomly picking roads on a map. I think

that shows that they knew what they were doing. I believe that the pine creek trail

is on it as well