Tuesday, 12 February 2019
Campground
By this morning, I'd already learned several unpalatable truths: I don't have a wifi signal at this campground - either from the campground or on my hotspot; I would be out of dog food by suppertime; I was coming very close to empty on the propane tank; and I didn't want to stay in that particular campsite even one more night as I'd had nightmares about it last night. All those things meant, like it or not, I'd have to move today.
The nightmares were weird. They were partly based on this campsite being very near the county road, which I hadn't expected until I got there and could easily hear the cars going by. It made me feel vulnerable, because there's almost nobody in this campground either. Just one other camper, but that site is about as close as the county road.
And the nightmares were partly based on the veritable swamp that this campground is in, partly because that's what nature intended and partly because it's been raining so much - a rain that was forecast to stop yesterday evening but instead continued most of the night.
And they were partly based on the feeling of claustrophobia I'm getting from this tiny campsite, which is barely long enough for my tiny RV and is completely surrounded by grasses or reeds or whatever those tall plants are that I've been seeing growing in marshes for the last umpteen states, and it's separated only by a narrow single-lane road from another huge mass of grasses, all of them 5'-8' high and impossible to see through. I was completely closed in by this living wall.
All those things made me feel both completely isolated and completely vulnerable to whatever could come in from the road. Not that any sane person would try it because there must be a huge marsh or swamp between the road and our site, big enough to support that mass of grasses. But I still didn't want to stay another night in that spot. Not when there were so many vacant campsites available.
I called the campground office, got permission to move to another site, and learned that they didn't know who might sell me propane. I couldn't do any research on my own because I couldn't access the internet, but I remembered passing a Tractor Supply yesterday and thought I could at least call them if I could look up their phone number, so I drove back to the NAS area.
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| today's route |
I got to Lexington Park, where the NAS gates are, or maybe it was California - they're right on top of each other - and parked in a shopping center and got busy on my computer. I called the Tractor Supply who said no propane but suggested the Ace Hardware or the Burch Oil Co. The Ace Hardware said no but another Ace about 20 miles down the road did. Burch Oil said no, I should go to 3 Mules. And I thought huh? But sure enough, the internet said 3 Mules has 2 locations nearby and I called the closest one and he said sure, just pull up by the tank at the side of the building and he'd help me out. I used to swear by the Yellow Pages, back in the olden days. This is the traveler's version.
The critters and I ate lunch and walked around the parking lot and went down the road to a Harris Teeter grocery store where I got dog food and milk. Then we went to 3 Mules, which turns out to be a small old hardware store with a young knowledgeable owner, or maybe the son of the owner. Nice guy. Filled my propane tank which was, as I thought, only .2 gallons shy of empty.
St. Mary's City
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| Old State House |
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| reconstructed village |
The dogs and I walked around that parking lot too, but I didn't want to take them on the grounds. The weather has been raw all day and wasn't any better this afternoon: wind, rain, low clouds making the day look gray - just very unpleasant. Not a day for outdoors sightseeing.
I saw some crepe myrtle, another sign I'm moving back toward the South. Country music stations were all over the radio - many of them and almost nothing else. Lucky I like it.
Confederate Memorial Cemetery
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| Federal monument |
On the way back to the camp, I stopped at this Confederate memorial site, established long ago by the US and Maryland governments.
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| inscription on Fed. monument |
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| State of Maryland monument |
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| inscription on MD monument |
The situation must have felt chaotic both for those in charge of the prisoners and for the medical staff. Illnesses would have been inevitable, many must have been suffering from wounds, medical science was in its infancy. It's surprising to me that only about 3,400 died under these circumstances.
Confederate Memorial Park
This site is next door to the government site, separated only by a band of trees and a point of view. After reading the signs posted here, I got the impression the founders were motivated as much by outrage at not being allowed to fly the Confederate flag in the cemetery as by distress at the POW camp conditions.
At one point, the sign commentary compares the 52,000 POWs at this camp to the 45,000 POWs at Andersonville, the POW camp the Confederacy set up in Georgia. What interests me is that the sign doesn't go on to point out that 13,000 people died in the Andersonville camp, compared to the 3,400 here at this camp.
What also interests me is the insistence of the signs that the motivation for the war was state's rights, but doesn't go on to note that the only right the states didn't have in the Union was the right to own slaves.
You can't see in my photo on the right that this plaza is surrounded by flagpoles flying the different flags that are shown on one of the signs. What you can see is that the memorial's founders went all in on setting up this memorial.
Point Lookout Lighthouse
I drove past the campground to see the Point Lookout Lighthouse that the map said is here. I turned out to be much further down the road than I'd expected because I hadn't realized I'd be driving on a fairly narrow spit of land between the Patuxent River and the Potomac River, both of which empty here into the Chesapeake Bay. You can imagine the value of this spot as a lookout point (get it? Point Lookout?) during the various wars. In fact, the park literature says the Americans used it during both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 to watch for the British. With Virginia part of the Confederacy, the Union Army of course used it during the Civil War. One of the 3 forts they built then is still here.
The road led past a beach and recreation area that is probably heavily used in the summer. This is also apparently an area used by birdwatchers during spring and fall migrations, though there weren't many birds in sight today, due to the nasty weather - just some gulls and a flock of Buffleheads (one of my favorite birds).
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| male and female Buffleheads |
Back in the campground I first stopped off to visit the Civil War Museum they have there. Sadly, the sign said closed for the season. I'd hoped there'd at least be some interpretive signs outside but didn't see anything like that.
I went on and picked a campsite that's almost as short as the previous one, and is also backed by a wall of grasses, but it faces a large enough stretch or road that I can see a little distance in both directions and see the 2 vacant campsites opposite me. So even thought the clouds are still so low they're almost on the ground, it feels much more open here and I hope to sleep better.
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| behind me |
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| in front of me |
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