Saturday, 9 & Sunday, 10 February 2019
The weather forecast for the weekend was lousy but Monday was supposed to be nice and that's when I'd planned to go to western Maryland, so I decided to stay in the campground these 2 days.
Turned out that both days were cold and breezy but not unpleasant, while Monday's forecast gradually changed to possible ice and "wintry mix" farther north, where I'll be driving. You never know with the weather. Always something to look forward to.
I spent all Saturday - honestly, hours and hours - trying to figure out where I'll go for the rest of the month. There are only 4 campgrounds in all of western MD that are both open and will provide electric plug-ins for RVs. Two of those are near Wash. DC/Annapolis/Baltimore, and both of those cost in the $65/night range - much more than anywhere I've been before. A third campground is up in Hancock - the tiny "waist" of Maryland that comes just before that odd hook of MD's western part that loops around West Virginia and northern Virginia. The fourth is a state campground down in the far southern end of the state on Chesapeake Bay.
That fourth one - Point Lookout State Park - is the lowest priced, but it's a 2 hour drive from there up to Annapolis, let alone Baltimore, so would be a difficult base for sightseeing. The one in Hancock is also too far for central sights but seemed okay for checking out that western hook - and then I suddenly had a brain wave.
I checked back in my notebook at the research I'd done before I came on this trip and discovered that Maryland has parts of 2 mountain ranges, not just one. I remembered the Allegheny Mountains that extend from Pennsylvania through Maryland down into West Virginia. But I'd forgotten about the Blue Ridge Mountains, which I tend to think of as a southern range. And they are, but they also run through Maryland up into lower Pennsylvania. The Blue Ridge Mountains are far enough east that I would start to encounter them almost anywhere west of Washington, DC, which certainly includes Hancock.
Then I looked a lot more closely at the online maps and started seeing some serious topography, even along the interstates. My drive through these same mountains in western PA was almost a year ago, but it'll take a lot longer than that for me to forget the sheer terror of driving those mountain passes.
So I went back online and searched for information about road grades on I-68, the main route through western MD, and discovered that long-haul truckers HATE it because of its steep grades. They say Colorado has much worse (so much to look forward to) but these are really bad and many truckers avoid that road.
Which means that, given that it's still February and not July, I too will avoid that road and will - very regretfully - have to miss that whole western hook of the state. In fact, I'd have to deal with the Blue Ridge Mountains just to get to the battlefield at Antietam - Sept. 17, 1862, almost 23,000 soldiers were killed there in the deadliest battle in a single day in US history. The city of Frederick has a museum of Civil War medicine that I'd wanted to visit, but it too seems to be in the mountains.
It may well be that these places are in lowland areas and that the roads are just hills, not mountains. But I'm seeing weather forecasts for snow and freezing temperatures on many of the coming days and can't really expect anything else this time of year. So I'm sticking with the more southern and coastal areas for this trip.
It took me most of Saturday morning to figure all this out, and then I spent Saturday afternoon trying to come up with a plan to see most of what I want to see in Baltimore and Annapolis without breaking the bank at those campgrounds.
The current plan is to drive from here all the way around Chesapeake Bay to Point Lookout State Park - a 5½ hour drive for normal people - on Monday, stay there a few days, then go up to central MD when the weather is likely to be better. That's what I came up with on Saturday. Then Sunday morning the nice TV meteorologist said, sadly (she and I were both sad), that we can expect a band of snow in the northern part of the state, and a band of wintry mix around the Baltimore level, and moderate to heavy rain south of that, and also that freezing overnight temps tonight will bring the threat of icy roads in the morning.
I've already made and paid for my Point Lookout reservation so didn't want to also pay to stay here another night, so I figure I'll just wait and see what actually shows up and go from there. At least I now have this Golden Age pass for Maryland state parks that will give me half-price lodging on weeknights, so if I do have to stay it'll just bring my cost for the one night at both campgrounds to the regular cost.
Friday evening after dark, a 2nd paying camper drove in. I knew there were at least 2 people because someone directed the driver into the campsite with a flashlight. A good illustration of why it's best to arrive before dark. Then Saturday afternoon a 3rd paying camper came, parking between me and #2. I thought, if it keeps going like this it'll get congested around here and I'm glad I'm leaving Monday. But by early Sunday afternoon, both of them had gone and we were back to just me and the camp host. Less crowded in the bathroom. I can say from experience that the shower reduces its flow when someone flushes the toilet. Which 2 someones did to me. Way too crowded.
Saturday afternoon the dogs and I went back along the Nature Trail, and this time I took along the little pamphlet the campground offered that explained various stops along the trail. The ground was much soggier this time than before because much of the frost has melted. I really had to watch my step because I wasn't smart enough to wear my rubber boots. Still it was a pleasant walk.
I learned that this area used to be homesteaded and cleared for farming. But the Depression caused foreclosure of the farms, which the CCC then planted with loblolly pine, creating the Pocomoke River State Forest that this campground sits in.
I learned that cypress knees are part of the tree's root system that provides support for the cypress in the swamps.
I learned that softwood trees, like the pines, are fast-growing but will eventually be shaded out by oaks, maples and sweet gum that are hardwoods and slower-growing.
I learned that the plants I've been seeing everywhere that I thought might be some sort of azalea are actually mountain laurel. I'm used to the Texas version, which we were always told isn't really a mountain laurel anyway, and that's nothing like these plants. I learned that real mountain laurel likes the damp acid soils near the cypress swamp (but didn't learn why it's called mountain laurel when it prefers swamps). I learned that it grows gnarly branches that tangle together and is great for birds and other wildlife but not so much for people.
I don't know what the dogs learned, but we all had a nice walk.
On Sunday I got a million chores done: made a pot of Brunswick Stew (learning that accidentally-bought creamed corn doesn't work as well as kernel corn) and cornbread; cleaned the bathroom; updated my blog; took a shower; did a big load of laundry; washed the dishes; figured my driving route for Monday. By bedtime, I was pooped but things were clean, a good trade.
And I won't even know until tomorrow morning whether we'll leave or not. Depends on the weather.
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