There was no official agenda when we awoke this morning and we were in a quandry about what fun stuff we should do. We looked at the map and noticed that we are not camped far from Delaware. Peggy and I have been to all the states except Delaware and North Dakota although we cheated and flew to Hawaii and took a boat to Alaska. All the rest, except the missing two mentioned above, we drove through while on some form of road trip.
We chose to knock Delaware from the list. We left our campground in Manheim and headed southeast on rural roads. Most of the way, we were passing through farm country and small timber thickets owned by either Amish or Mennonite farm families and the scenery was gorgeous. These rolling hills farm scenes look like they are paintings of wonderful bucolic places where big, happy families live and work. I don’t know if they are happy but everyone we saw coming at us in horse-drawn buggies seemed to be smiling and quite content. On the way, we passed through small towns with old masonry buildings, filigreed metal 2nd floor balconies and extremely narrow streets, at least for a Ford F-250. The buggies fit fine.
After about 65 miles, we broke into Delaware, an extremely puny state. We drove in right where Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware meet in the very northwest corner of the state and home to White Clay State Park. We didn’t go in because they charge locals one price and interlopers, like us, twice as much so we hung a U-turn in the driveway and consulted the road atlas. We noted that nearby was the Delaware River, a location depicted in a painting of George Washington standing up in a rowboat on his way across the river to kill many British who were all quite drunk due to Xmas celebrations. I can imagine a bunch of soldiers rowing and thinking, “I wish George would sit down because he is rocking the boat.”
In any event, we drove over to the Delaware River at New Castle, another town with old brick masonry buildings. We did note that the orientation of the roads and the horrible, always-red signals bar the way of anyone trying to go anywhere so we decided to try some rural highways. Instead of going upriver toward Philadelphia and New Jersey, we went south downriver a bit past heavy industrial areas and large swampy fetid lagoons. Having decided we had seen enough, we headed west past I-95 and found our way back to Pennsylvania.
We stopped in Gap, PA, to eat at a place called Dutch-way Family Restaurant where the food was not as economical nor as good as Dienner’s a couple days ago. I could tell because by the time I got back to our trailer about an hour later, I was barely able to get to the growler in time.
North Dakota – you’re next.
We took a few pix you can see if you click here