Author: bplindsay

Days 103-104:  For more than three months we only got rain on our travel days, but now we finally entered a nine-day stretch of damp and dreary weather.  While visiting Paul’s second cousin Cindy and her husband Paul in Charlottesville, we resolved to meet next summer in New England, along with Cindy’s two brothers, to share memories, photos, and genealogical notes on our Lowry and Martine family heritage.  Among other delectables served to us by Cindy and Paul were paw paws from their paw-paw patch (very tasty!).

Abby & Payam met us at Cindy & Paul’s, and on the way from Charlottesville to D.C. the four of us hiked up Humpback Rocks along the Blue Ridge Parkway and looped back to the car on a short section of the Appalachian Trail.  On this misty and foggy day, the woods were peaceful, and we occasionally glimpsed some interesting gnarled trees among the tall hardwoods.

Days 105-107:  Despite the demands of a busy fall semester during her Ph.D. studies at American University, Abby still found the time to treat us to some home cooking and take us for a stroll through the National Arboretum.  We took her shopping for groceries and home improvement supplies (she doesn’t have a car).  While she was busy teaching, we went biking and visited Amy’s high school friend Debby and her husband Craig on Monday.

On Tuesday we did some sightseeing and went to the American Museum of Art.  The portraits of prominent early Americans were not only pleasing art, but they were accompanied by informative explanations of the lives and accomplishments of their subjects, characterizing life in the colonial era and early 1800s.

Days 108-109:  On the way back to New England, we met Amy’s sister Ruth at Salt Springs State Park in northern Pennsylvania.  We were the only ones in the small rustic campground.  This park is owned but not staffed or funded by the state.  Instead, it is ably managed by a volunteer organization.  The spring the park was named after was initially hidden by the local Native Americans from the early settlers, but later revealed for a large sum of money.

The American settlers built a salt works there, but it wasn’t productive enough to prosper.  A woolen mill was built there in 1858.

In 1902, an oil and gas company drilled a well over 2000 feet deep, but abruptly abandoned the project.  For many years, the farmhouse next to the site used the methane bubbling up from the well shaft for their lighting and cooking needs.  We explored the network of hiking trails in the park, including ones along the scenic Fall Creek gorge.

Days 110-111:  The last planned stop on our trip was an Aliner rally at Williamstown in eastern Vermont.  Ours was one of 35 Aliners camped there.  It was a nice time to visit with some friends we had made at last year’s rally and pick up bits of information on Aliner camping.

On Saturday afternoon we took a tour of the large granite quarry operated by the Rock of Ages Corporation.  Granite was once extracted there by blasting with black powder—there are huge waste piles of broken rock from those days.  Nowadays they carve out huge blocks of granite using precision saws and drills, with very little waste.  The “Barre Gray” granite formation is estimated to be large enough to last another 4,500 years!

Days 112-113:  On the way from Vermont to N.H. we detoured by way of Naugatuck, Conn., to attend the graveside memorial service for Amy’s stepmom Maude, who passed away while we were out in California.  We were surprised to find the campground at the local state park already closed for the season, despite glorious New England fall weather on the first weekend of October!  We resorted to camping in a Walmart parking lot for the first and only time on our trip.

Practically across the road from there, we walked around Amy’s old neighborhood where she grew up through her junior high years and she reminisced about her childhood friends.  At Maude’s burial the next morning, it was good to see several of Amy’s step family, whom we hadn’t seen for a while.  Entering N.H. on our final day’s drive, we paused in Keene and briefly visited Amy’s grad school friend Kathy, who with her husband Steve had joined us for a hike during our very first Aliner outing, back in May 2012.

14Oct:  It has been nine days since we pulled into our driveway at the end of our whirlwind tour to California and back.  Four of those days were devoted to another trip with the camper, so we are still in the process of settling into “normal” life again.  The encore trip was to Connecticut, on the occasion of Paul’s 50-year high school reunion.  The festivities were spread out over two days, allowing bonus time for socializing as well as a leisurely walk along the Farmington River among the fall colors.  We also visited the eastern Connecticut shore village of Noank to see our friends Wayne & Hildegard, who took us hiking and to a chamber music concert one day, then walking along a Rhode Island beach the next, in superb fall weather.

Back home at last, it will take a while to establish our retirement routine, now that we are at home and don’t have to go into work.  Did we enjoy being on such a long trip?  Yes, it was great.  We would love to do it again, and hope to head out to the Pacific Northwest and Canadian Rockies in 2017.  Next summer, though, Amy wants to stay home so she doesn’t miss a second year in a row of blueberry season and swimming in our lake.

This year we added 18 states to the number in which we have camped with the Aliner, hiked, and biked (Conn., Penn., Minn., N.D., S.D., Wyo., Ida., Nev., Calif., Ariz., Colo., Neb., Iowa, Ind., Mich., Ohio, W.Va., and Va.).  What were the highlights of our trip?  Visiting family and friends across the country was certainly high on the list.  It was also fun exploring scenic canyons, mountains, and forests, as well as learning a lot of interesting natural history and cultural history of the diverse areas we traveled through.  After nearly four months of traveling, it felt like we had barely scratched the surface of what North America has to offer.  If we had to name the one most interesting place we saw, both of us would probably vote for Mesa Verde National Park.  There were several other ancient pueblo ruins in Arizona and Colorado that were also very interesting.  Despite general similarities, each site highlighted some unique insights into ancient life in the arid Southwest.

Mother Nature had a mean joke for us as we were getting ready to depart for another long cross-country camping trip:  April began with about a foot of newly-fallen wet and heavy snow to shovel.  Two years ago we traveled for just under four months and didn’t leave until mid-June, but this year we’ll be on the road for a bit over five months, with departure only four days off.  We plan to be in the Canadian Rockies in late July-early August, but we need about an extra month and a half before that, when we’ll be vacating “Vagabond” to visit family, spend three weeks touring Peru, and cruise off the Washington coast for a week with friends in their boat.

This is our first new blog post since October 2015.  Last year, so we could enjoy summer at our lakeside home in N.H., we only went on short camping excursions.  The longest of those was four weeks to North Carolina and back.  Our other four trips last year were just three to six days long and closer to home (White Mountains, Maine coast, western Maine, and Pennsylvania & New York).

5-8 April:  On departure day, there were still several inches of the recent snow left, plus a little extra that fell overnight.  As we drove off, the rising water level of our lake had begun to flood across our road.  Gray clouds thinned a bit as we headed south, snow accumulations disappeared as we drove through Massachusetts, there was a green blush of new grass shoots poking up in Connecticut, and early-flowering landscape trees were blooming in New Jersey.  We camped in the driveway of Amy’s sister Ruth overnight, then headed off for new states to add to our camping/hiking/biking portfolio.  Our first objective for 2017 happened to be the First State (Delaware).

Still, it didn’t feel like spring.  We reached our Delaware campground around lunchtime, and hunkered down inside Vagabond for much of the afternoon during rain and thunderstorms.  We were bundled up in our warmest clothing against the chilly damp weather, and finally resorted to turning on the heater in the camper.  Finally it cleared off and we took a 6-mile hike around Lums Pond.  The trail was very nice, and we saw a snowy egret, a great blue heron, and some Canada geese.  Sweet gum must be the dominant tree here, because much of the trail was littered with their round, spiky seed pods.

The next day was chilly and rainy again, so indoor reading and rug hooking entertained us until late afternoon, when the rain stopped and we ventured out for a bike ride.  We rode on the C&D Canal Recreational Trail, from near the campground to Chesapeake City, Maryland, and back.  A bald eagle soared past us.  The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was dug by hand during 1824-1829, and is still in operation today as one of only two sea-level canals in the U.S.  The canal shortened the water route between Philadelphia and Baltimore by some 300 miles.  The campground was filled nearly to capacity for the weekend despite the cold and wet weather, making us glad that we had made reservations.

At last, a sunny and warmer day as we drove to a short overnight stop in West Virginia.  A bit of recent snow dusted the higher elevations as we drove over the Eastern Continental Divide, but lower down the grass was high enough that cattle were out grazing.

9 April:  We woke up to frost on the grass in the middle of West Virginia, but as we drove on into eastern Kentucky that same day, the temperature soared into the mid-to-high 70s.  Prominent in the scenery we drove through were redbud trees in bloom, providing colorful purplish-pink accents against the still bare hardwoods.  We camped at a very attractive campground in the Daniel Boone National Forest and went for a hike on a trail along the top of Koomer Ridge, with spring wildflowers blooming, steep drop-offs to either side of the ridge, limestone boulders, cliffs, and an arch.10 April:  Continuing west, we descended into less hilly terrain and stopped at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park, which included both his boyhood home at Knob Creek Farm and his birthplace at Sinking Spring.  The informational signs and a nice long talk with a volunteer ranger made this a very worthwhile place to visit.  We continued on to Mammoth Cave National Park, and spent some time going through the visitor center displays.  Mammoth Cave is the longest in the world, with a little over 400 miles of passageways  explored and mapped so far.  During both the Revolution and the War of 1812, this cave and others in the region were valuable sources of nitrate, which was used to make saltpeter for manufacturing gunpowder.

11 April:  We started the day with a ride on the gravel bike path that generally followed the 9-mile route of the Mammoth Cave tourist railroad, which operated from 1886 to 1929.  The historical and geological informational signs, the varied terrain, and the redbud and dogwood in full bloom made for a pleasant ride, at least until Amy’s rear tire blew out on the return ride!

After lunch we took a self-guided cave tour down through the Historical Entrance and past the site of the nitrate mining operations, where some of the original equipment still remains.  The pipes conveying water to the leaching beds and then conveying the nitrate-rich leachate back out of the cave were made of hand-bored tulip poplar logs.  The labor for the mining operation was provided by slaves.  The reason the cave mud was rich in nitrates was the guano from bats.  Very few bats remain here today in this cave affected by white-nose syndrome.  Visitors exiting the cave walk over a mat saturated with detergent to prevent infecting other caves.

The passageway through which we walked was very broad, nearly level, and unadorned by any of the intricate formations we have seen in other limestone caves (they occur in other parts of Mammoth Cave, though).  The cave was sculpted by water seeping through limestone, but a cap layer of impervious sandstone has prevented a lot of vertical seeping, resulting in mostly horizontal flow through the limestone.  There are several roughly horizontal layers of passageways in the extensive Mammoth Cave system, with a few vertical connections.