Posted 7-28-2014
7-26-2014 Millie and I have been on the road again. It’s a
short trip and I wasn’t going to write about it in the blog but Millie said we
should just for our own recollection. It’s a writer’s morning here in Mount Rogers
National Forest, overcast
with a spattering of rain, no cell service and no internet, so I’m tapping out
an entry. If you ever want to just get away from everything for a bit, come to
southwestern Virginia.
Most of Mount Rogers National Forest
is beautiful tree covered mountains and very few people. Few people mean few
potential customers for the cell companies which mean no cell towers. Folks who
live out here still rely on land line telephones, imagine that! We’re here to
visit Millie’s sister Betty and her husband Paul who have a small blueberry
farm in the shadow of Mount Rogers and White
Top Mountain.
We had barely been home from the 5 month road trip before
heading out again. We haven’t been up north to visit family for a while. We are
already making plans for next winters cross country adventure and wanted to
visit family first, so after six busy weeks in Myrtle Beach it was time to go again.
7-13-2014 Once again we took highway 17 north thru the Carolina’s, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
Our first day took us to Virginia
Beach where we stayed one night at Indian Cove Resort.
It is a Coast to Coast Affiliate and as members it only cost us $15.
7-14-2014 Day two took us to our destination in Delaware, Lumm’s Pond State Park.
Delaware
has many nice parks in all respects except camping. Lumm’s only has six
campsites with electric service. They are almost always booked on weekends so
once again our visit was restricted to weekdays. We visited with my parents,
brothers and son but missed seeing some of my old friends.
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| L-R Millie, Dad Midash, Mom Midash, Delaney-Larry-Kristie Midash |
7-16-2014 On Wednesday I took Millie to Winterthur,
the DuPont mansion in northern Delaware.
The house is supposed to have 175 rooms but the tour only went thru about a
dozen, don’t know what they’re doing with the rest of it. We’ve been thru so
many old houses filled with stuffy old furniture and dark old pictures I guess
we’re a bit jaded when it comes to historic mansions. We were impressed with
the wide plank flooring and the gardens surrounding the house are very nice.
The highlight of the mansion at least from Millies vantage was the display of
costumes from the British show Downton Abbey. Winterthur is a real life example of life in
the Fictitious Downton Abbey time period.
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| Winterthur |
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| Downton Abbey exhibit |
7-18-2014 Next stop was the Elks Lodge on Kent Island,
Maryland. The Stevensville Lodge has four RV sites and we were the only RV
there all weekend, cost for visiting Elk members is $20 a night.
7-19-2014 On Saturday we drove the jeep across the Delmarva Peninsula
to my brother John and his wife Sandy’s new home outside Lewes Delaware. As expected
they have a beautiful new home on a large country lot.
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| Baltimore Inner Harbor |
7-20-2014 Sunday we went to Baltimore
where we toured Fort
McHenry. I recommend
doing the video presentation before walking the fort. The short film details
the events that put the British, the Americans and Francis Scott Key in Baltimore harbor on Sept
13 1814. The end of the film is of course the dawn of the next day when the
rising fog revealed the American flag still flying over the fort. Next the
screen rolls up exposing a large window looking out over the fort and our flag
flying as it did that fateful night.
I know I’m being a bit of a spoiler writing about that but
it still raises Goosebumps every time I experience it and I hope it will
inspire you to go.
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| Fort McHenry |
Afterwards we had lunch at La Tasca in the Baltimore tourist area called The Inner Harbor.
We enjoyed our meal al fresco, our table overlooking the colonial era warship
the USS Constellation. It was our first time at a Spanish restaurant and it was
an interesting experience. The food is sold in small portions, the idea is you each
chose several and everyone shares the selections. The food was good,
reminiscent of Cuban food but not as spicy. While in Baltimore
we also did a driving tour thru Fells Point, John’s Hopkins, THE BLOCK, and past the Orioles and
Ravens stadiums.
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| Naval Academy |
7-21-2014 Monday we went to Annapolis
to visit the Naval
Academy. Annapolis was a frequent port of call in my
boating days so I’ve been to the academy several times. In fact we used to ride
bikes around the campus before terrorists and the locking down of everything.
After going thru security we signed up for a guided walking tour and I highly
recommend it. Our tour guide took us inside many buildings that we would never
have seen if we were on our own.
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| Naval Academy |
As we walked back to the city dock I suggested lunch at
Phillips Seafood which overlooks Ego Alley. The alley is the deadened canal
past the city docks which all manor of boats slowly cruise. The parade of
watercraft passes the docked boats and tourists of the city dock, the patrons
of Prussers’ dockside bar and the experienced eyes of the old naval types at
the Fleet Reserve Club, then one by one each craft turns about in the tiny
basin and putts back out past the observers. It’s the see and be seen event of
the Annapolis
boating world. It sounds very vain but it is fun, I’ve done it myself.
Our lunch at Phillips was, sorry to say disappointing,
especially to me as I had just told Millie that it originated in Ocean City
and was considered the epitome of Maryland
crab cuisine. She said Phillips must be a chain as we used to have one in Myrtle Beach. I said a
lot of Marylanders would cringe at Phillips being called a chain. Phillips
closing down in Myrtle Beach
makes sense to me now, our town has hundreds of restaurants and only the very
good ones survive.
7-22-2014 On Tuesday we departed Kent
Island and crossed the Bay Bridge
for the third time in as many days. Our first stop for the day was due west of
the District of Columbia
so in keeping with our local road philosophy we shunned the many ribbons of
beltway and took the motorhome with jeep in tow straight thru the capitol. We
even went down Constitution Ave
past the Memorials Mall and all the museums.
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| Constitution Ave in DC |
A word of warning; just about every traffic signal we went
through in the city was a photo enforced red light. As is usually the case the
light timing was very short, the system is clearly more of revenue generator
than safety device.
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| Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center |
West of the city we stopped at Dulles
International Airport
to visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy
Center which is an extension of the
Smithsonian air and Space
Museum. The museum has
many finely restored civilian and military airplanes as well as space exhibits,
the most prominent being the space shuttle, Discovery. The most famous aircraft
on the aviation side is the B-29 bomber that ended World War 2, the Enola Gay.
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| Space Shuttle Discover |
Before leaving the museum we found my Dad’s name which is
engraved on one of the foils that frame the entrance to the museum. He spent
his whole working life, including 3 years of World War Two in aviation and my
brothers and I thought it would be appropriate for his name to be a permanent
part of the museum.
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| Entrance to Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center |
Moving on we drove west to Front Royal and overnighted at
Skyline Ranch Resort. It is also a Coast to Coast Affiliate so only cost us
$15. The next morning we did the long drive down I-81 to the southwestern
corner of Virginia.
I-81 is actually a very scenic, when you drive down Skyline Drive the highway you see in wide
valley to the west is I-81. So 81 is kind of like Skyline Drive except its straight and
shared with 60,000lb tractor trailers doing 70mph.
That brings us back to Mount
Rogers and our stay in Southwestern Virginia. Besides visiting with family where
we also we picked blueberries, we rode bikes on the Virginia Creeper Trail. The
Virginia Creeper is a railroad to trail conversion, the popular portion of it
runs 17 miles from the top of Mount Rogers to Damascus
Virginia. We rode the entire
distance which sounds very impressive, until I mention that it is almost all
downhill.
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| Virginia Creeper trail |
7/27/2014 We drove home to Myrtle Beach today. It was an easy uneventful
ride. We really enjoy our time on the road but it’s always good to be back home
again!
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| Home again |
