Friday, 11 January 2018
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| today's route |
Housing
The first place I wanted to go was Dagsboro. Right. Where?? But there was a woman in the laundromat yesterday who told me she'd spent her whole life in Dagsboro (except for several years in Florida and several more years somewhere else and for the last while she's been living in another somewhere, and she looked not much more than 40 so I kept wondering how long she'd actually lived in Dagsboro - and she kept repeating that several times). Anyway, she said she'd loved living there, it was such a nice small town and the people were friendly, and then she'd come back to visit relatives (after going to Florida) and was horrified to discover lots of new houses and thought it was being ruined. So I wanted to see.
Dagsboro looks like a nice little town, population 805 in the 2010 census. And there are in fact, a batch of houses just off Main Street that are clearly much newer than the 1850-1950 era houses in most of the town. It is unfortunately a complaint everywhere that nice places get ruined by people loving them to death. That was my complaint about Austin. I had a friend who was born and raised in Seattle and would never voluntarily set foot in it now because he hated what it had become. Too bad if local government can't figure out how to deal with the changes and still keep their pleasant atmosphere.
All over Delaware I've been seeing housing being built. Everywhere I've been in the state, housing developments. Enough to make me wonder if Delaware's taken precautions to keep its farmland intact, like other states have done. Also enough to make me wonder who it is that's moving into all these houses. Is Delaware having a population boom? Lots of people moving into the state? It sure looks like it.
Beaches
I drove over to the southern coast, to Bethany Beach (apparently well-known in the area) south to Fenwick Island (beyond which Maryland starts). The small coastal communities all looked nearly brand new to me. None of this quaint little 100-year-old seaside housing that I saw up in New England. I'm sure it's all really nice, but it didn't look like any place I could afford.
As with all the East Coast beaches I've seen so far, Delaware doesn't allow any cars on its beaches. Instead parking area and fences denoting walkways over the dunes. Not having the dogs with me to enjoy it, I didn't stop.
Swamp
The map shows a sizeable cypress swamp running from southern Delaware into Maryland. I'd read that Trap Pond, where the campground is, is part of a cypress swamp preservation area, though I haven't seen any swamp myself. So I went hunting for it.
The small country road I took across most of the state did in fact run through an area that was noticeably (even to me) a cypress swamp, complete with cypress knees (since without them I don't know how to identify cypress). I saw farmland along the road and wondered if they had to drain the land to farm or if it was just a non-swampy part of the countryside.
The campground is about 15 miles from the swamp I saw, and I decided to take some extra time to look for the nature center nearby. I found it, and there I found a sign saying Trap Pond State Park protects a remaining part of wetlands that once covered much of southwest Sussex County. And as I drove from the nature center past the pond to the campground, I realized I'd been looking at cypress knees since I'd been here without realizing it. Easy to be blind if you don't know what to look for.
Delaware, by the way, has a sum total of 3 counties. New Castle County covers the northern third of the state, Kent County includes Dover (the capital) and the middle third of the sate, and Sussex County is the southern third. (The county names alone proclaim the British influence in Delaware's early history.)
Disaster Cleanup
Back at the campground I took the time to finish what I'd started yesterday. The professional had apparently come and gone, yesterday's mess had been cleaned up, and I still had tanks to empty. So I did, without event (thank goodness). But there still wasn't any water at the dump site so I had to pack up that hose yet again and take it back to my campsite where there's water.
I hooked up my water hose and got a reluctant stream of water (the temperature was at or below freezing all day) and washed the outside of the hose and the inside of the hose container out in all the leaves at my campsite. I knew not to wash out the inside of the hose because of leaving human waste to lie around on the ground like that. But I had to get off the relatively minimal waste on the outside of the hose, and that's what I did. I figured if anybody wanted to complain, then complaints could work both ways, but no one did.
By the time I'd gotten that done and the hose repacked, my hands were feeling frostbitten. Those vinyl gloves are great for keeping waste off your hands, but they aren't insulated. So I went inside and turned on the heater and spent time getting warmed up. That made Lily happy.
Miscellaneous
Delaware doesn't seem to use volunteers to clean up litter off the roadways. I'm pretty sure it's prisoners that I've been seeing staffing litter crews while I've been here, and I haven't seen any of those "this highway adopted by ___" signs we see in so many places.
I finally figured out that I've been seeing lots of chicken farms as I've been driving around. I haven't seen even one that was labeled, but I'm sure that's what those huge buildings I've seen are housing, is chicken farms. We're right next to Maryland which is known for poultry, and I can't imagine what else there'd be in so many unlabeled very large industrial-looking buildings.
I've seen several signs like this:
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| LOOK AGAIN |
Some of them have only 4 numbers and look more old-fashioned, but they can be on brand-new cars so I can't tell how they're issued. Maybe you get to keep your license plate when you buy a new car.
Back to day care
I got another great report. Jo Ann seems to have come around to Dexter, as people usually do after a while. He really is a sweetie, but he's an acquired taste.
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