Biking over Boulder Bridge (photo by Rebecca Schley)

Biking in Rock Creek Park is limited to paved surfaces such as city street and multi-purpose trails. The streets can be very congested and there are no bike lanes—or even road shoulders—so I do not recommend biking on the streets. Rock Creek Park is not an enclosed park with an entrance gate, so the roads that run through it are public streets. The only time I would suggest riding on them is when they are closed to vehicle traffic. On Saturdays from 7 AM until Sundays at 7 PM and federal holidays, Bingham Drive, Sherrill Drive, and parts of Beach Drive are closed to vehicles. Beach Drive sections include the following:

• From the northwestern park border near Boundary Bridge to the intersection with West Beach Drive
• From Wise Road to Picnic Area #10
• From the Park Police Station to the intersection with Broad Branch Road

Keep in mind that to get from one closed segment of Beach Drive to the next that you must ride on segments that are open to vehicles. No bike trails connect the segments.

Biking on congested streets within Rock Creek Park (photo by Ken Mayer)

There are also paved multi-purpose trails at Rock Creek Park that allow both hikers and bikers. I did not ride my bike at the park, but I did hike 80 percent of the trails, some of which overlap with the multi-purpose trails. The terrain is hilly, so expect a ride of moderate difficulty. Multi-purpose trails can be found at the following locations:

• Intersection of Oregon Avenue and Wise Road to the Rock Creek Nature Center
• West end of Bingham Road east to Beach Drive, then continuing south parallel to Beach Drive to just past Military Road, then west to connect with the Wise Road-Nature Center multi-purpose trail
• Intersection of Beach Drive and Broad Branch Road near Peirce Mill all the way to the Arlington Memorial Bridge parallel to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, a distance of 5.6 miles. On the other side of the bridge the trail then becomes the multi-purpose Mount Vernon Trail.