What it's like to sleep along Maryland's 200-year-old canal, one lock-keeper house at a time

Sleep along Maryland’s 200-year-old Chesapeake & Ohio Canal can mean more than a picturesque hike. At mile nine (13km) of the 184.5-mile (297km) C&O Canal Towpath, a single 19th-century lock-keeper house is now an overnight stop, part of a network the National Park Service and the C&O Canal Trust began opening for lodging in 2010. The writer arrives from Washington, DC’s Georgetown—mile zero—hiking past restored lift locks and the canal’s history as a Union supply route in the Civil War. At its 1870s peak, 550 mule-powered boats moved through 74 lift locks; today, 26 lockhouses remain along the towpath.