After hiking across the state of Maryland on the Appalachian Trail via a series of section hikes in 2022, I started eyeing if there were any other states I could reasonably cross on foot again.

Since I live in Maryland, I started by researching other states around me and found that there is a trail that runs across the state of Delaware. The trail starts in Chesapeake City, Maryland as the Ben Cardin C&D Canal Trail and then once it crosses into Delaware changes names to the Michael Castle Trail, ending in Delaware City, Delaware. 

You can find the AllTrails map for this walk here.

On Friday, October 25th, 2024 Mark and I drove to Delaware City, Delaware to begin our walk. We parked in the parking lot at 78 Washington Street, Delaware City, Delaware which is a free parking lot in the town. There is also plenty of free parking along Washington Street and Clinton Street. We parked around 9:15am.

From there, we Ubered about 20-25 minutes to the trail start. The Uber was $33. While the full trail from downtown Chesapeake City to downtown Delaware City is 15.4 miles, I actually started my walk closer to the Delaware border (the first 1.9 miles are Maryland, so I wanted to skip that part). To do so, I directed our Uber to 1000 Biddle Street, Chesapeake City, Maryland, and walked towards the trail, making my total walk 13.5 miles. If you want to do the full 15.4 miles, you could Uber to Schaefer’s Canal House in Chesapeake City, Maryland and start at the Ben Cardin C&D Canal Trail beginning.

Here’s an image of the two drop off location options:

We arrived at the trail at 10am and began our walk. Within a few minutes of starting, we crossed over from Maryland to the Michael Castle Trail in Delaware. The trail is paved throughout, and largely flat. The trail runs along the C&D Canal so most of our view along the way was boats, bridges, and trees. We timed our walk to be on a sunny, clear weather day. The high the day we walked was 66 degrees. As it was late October, the foliage through our entire walk was incredibly beautiful as well.

For the walk we had packed snacks, lunch, and lots of water. There are no water fountains along the way so I do recommend bringing everything food and drink-wise you will need for the walk time.

Bathrooms were available along the way. They can be found at South Lums Trailhead, Grain H20 (a restaurant you’d have to go into to use them), St. George’s Trailhead, and Biddle Point Trailhead. There were also port-a-potties available in Fort Delaware State Park in Delaware City, Delaware if you need to use them before or after the walk. 

Here’s an image of the bathroom locations:

There are also a lot of benches along the way – at least 50 – so it is easy to rest if you want. The benches are actually numbered and it kind of became fun to use them as our countdown to the end. 

Our personal cadence was to rest every 3 miles for the first 6 miles, then every 2 miles until 10 miles, and then we started doing every mile or so until we finished. Some of our stops were for snacks, lunch, or water, and others I just relaxed my feet and stretched. I do recommend stretching as you get into the later miles as my leg muscles started to tighten up. By stretching, I could comfortably continue the walk and had minimal soreness the next day.

To prepare for the walk physically, I had done a couple of 3-4 mile walks at the speed I hoped to walk at in the two weeks leading up to the walk.

You don’t need a map for the majority of the walk as the trail is straightforward; the only area where the All Trails map was helpful is when we passed through the Summit North Marina area.

One place of note along the trail is the African Union Church Cemetery which is about a mile out from the end of the trail. This cemetery is from the 1800s and served the residents of Polktown, one of the state’s earliest free black settlements.

Our actual walk time was 5 hours at a pace of about 22-23 minutes per mile. Since we stopped along the way though, we finished in 6 hours at 4pm. I do recommend giving yourself more time than needed to be safe. We had given ourselves 8 hours of daylight just in case we moved slower than anticipated or had some sort of issue. In the event you do need to end your walk, there are areas along or nearby the trail where there is road access that an Uber could reach.

To celebrate finishing, we went to the restaurant at the end of the trail in Delaware City called Crabby Dick’s. This was a fun place to grab drinks and appetizers after our accomplishment of walking across a state. I was also tempted by the Ice Cream Parlor next door to Crabby Dick’s. 

We had to head back home after our walk, but if we had had more time, I would have loved to spend a bit more time in Delaware City. Delaware City is a historic port town with quaint homes and several small businesses. Additionally, the Fort Delaware State Park in the town looks interesting to explore.