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On the road again:
Greetings from East Harbor State Park on the south shore of Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio
Click here to see some of the photos that Cyndy has taken on our journey.
Today's Story
Cyndy and I are completing a three-week swing of the lower New England and mid-Atlantic Seaboard states where we went in search of colorful fall leaves.
Along the way, we stayed in a variety of places that represent a microcosm of our recurrent decisions about where to camp. It is this decision-making process that I wish to share with you today.
When we lived in a brick-and-mortar home, there was a certain level of consistency in my writing life. When I would get up in the morning, I always knew where to find my desk, my computer, my internet router.
On the road, those consistencies don’t exist. My “desk” might be our dining room table or a picnic table, or my lap on the bed or in a beach chair. I connect to the internet through my smartphone … if there is a cell tower nearby.
Frequently, we talk about where we will be next. And if there will be electricity or water or sewer hookups … or, if not, where we can fill our potable water tanks and dump our waste into a sanitation station.
If there is no electricity, we pick campsites with enough exposure to sunlight to power our solar panels and keep our two six-volt batteries charged.
On this particular jaunt eastward, after leaving Kalamazoo, we stayed one night in the driveway of a friend’s home in Canton, Michigan, so that we could easily attend a wedding the next day.
The next night, we were in an urban parking lot near where Cyndy’s mother lives so that we could celebrate her birthday.
From there, we considered heading toward upstate New York by way of Ontario, crossing into Canada at Sarnia and exiting at Niagara Falls. But we didn’t.
When crossing the international border, it’s possible that our trailer would be searched. We don’t carry weapons or contraband of any type.
But we do have some frozen fish and organic meat given to us by relatives that isn’t wrapped with government-approved labels found on food sold in stores. Rather than risk having that confiscated by border guards, we stayed in the US, exiting from Michigan southward into Ohio and turning east toward Pennsylvania.
For the first two nights, we chose campgrounds that were a comfortable driving distance. The first was a municipal campground in Stow, Ohio. The second was Black Moshannon State Park in rural central Pennsylvania.
We like municipal campgrounds because they are a little more quaint and we feel good about supporting a local community. In Stow, we chose a particular site because it was level—always a consideration with a trailer—and at the top of a knoll from which we enjoyed a sunset across a meadow and distant tree line.
In Clinton, New Jersey, we chose the campground at Spruce Run State Park because it was near a commuter railroad station from which we could easily travel into New York City to see some Broadway plays. This state park also offered a lovely view of numerous golden-leafed trees and a water reservoir.
From there, we decided to turn southward because the fall colors had already peaked farther north.
We skirted Philadelphia and then made our way to Henlopen State Park in Delaware, a place we chose because it looked good on a map. This park sits on Cape Henlopen, a spit of land that marks the southern mouth of Delaware Bay.
Walking on the expansive beach, we encountered a talkative local who told us about the two lighthouses there: one offshore a short distance and the other more than a quarter mile into the interior of a bay—a strange place for a lighthouse, I thought.
Pointing to the latter, he said that it was built in 1826 and used to be at the tip of the cape. But, because of northward drifting sand, the point of the cape grows about one foot per year into the Atlantic, thus the need for the newer lighthouse.
After two nights on Cape Henlopen, we went only 50 miles south to Assateague National Seashore in Maryland, which is also on the Atlantic Coast and famous for its numerous feral horses that graze in the dune grass.
There, we could have camped in a state park or the national seashore; we chose the national property because we have US government-issued senior passes that give us a 50-percent discount at all national campgrounds. Plus, it turned out, the national seashore was much prettier than the state park.
We stayed there two nights, walking the expansive beach to the north for five hours one day and to the south for six hours the next day. The waves there were pretty gentle and the sea shells, especially those of helmet-shaped horseshoe crabs, interesting.
Our next destination was Kiptopeke State Park in Virginia. We chose this place because it was acclaimed as a pretty place, which it is, and because of its location at the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, a bay-filled land mass that separates the Atlantic from Chesapeake Bay and is named because of its association with Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.
The park is on the bay side of the peninsula, so we walked a bay beach, admiring a host of extremely colorful sea shells. From a fisherman, we learned local lore about fishing weirs that extend a few hundred yards perpendicular with the beach into the water.
Looking online, we found that the sandy shoreline is protected by a string of derelict concrete-hulled ships permanently anchored about one-quarter mile offshore, an interesting site, especially when crowned by hundreds of shorebirds.
Kiptopeke also gave us easy access to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, an impressive structure of three bridges and two tunnels that connect the Delmarva Peninsula to the Virginia mainland at Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
We enjoyed crossing this 24-mile span on a semi-cloudy day that provided a picturesque view of the water, several container ships, and seaside communities.
Our next destination was a contra dance in the rural area southwest of Charlottesville, Virginia. There, we parked in the yard of another dance couple, next to an expansive hay field surrounded by colorful, rolling Virginia hills.
On Sunday night, after the dance weekend, we parked our truck and trailer on a street in residential Charlottesville and stayed two nights with another dance friend.
Then, it was time to turn toward Michigan for a few days of personal and professional appointments. With no particular destination in mind, we chose another municipal campground in Beckley, West Virginia.
There, perched atop a hill, we parked our trailer amid some beautiful orange- and red-leafed maple trees, experiencing close-up some of the best fall foliage of the entire trip.
We also visited the coal mining museum and took a guided tour into a once-operational mine that lay, literally, several hundred feet beneath our campsite. I’ll write more about that in a later blog.
Currently, on this second day of November, we are in northern Ohio. We made the decision to be here based solely on temperature. With our water pipes exposed on the outside of the trailer, we have to avoid prolonged freezing temperatures. Scouring the weather maps for West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, the warmest overnight temps—by a few degrees—are forecast to be here where we are now.
So we’ll be on this peninsula that juts into Lake Erie for four nights. There are several inland campgrounds in this area, but we chose this one because it gives us a chance to walk the beach here too.
Next week, we’ll be back in Kalamazoo for a few days. There, we’ll park our trailer inside our friend’s airplane hangar. Why? Because it’s heated is one practical answer. But, more than that, we like JP’s company and just hanging out with him.
Next blog: A glimpse of working conditions in the vintage coal mine in Beckley, West Virginia.
Thanks for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
