Delaware - Day 17 - Laurel

Trap Pond State Campground
Thursday, 17 January 2019

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out where to stay for the rest of the month and when I'd be able to fit in day care for the dogs and what I still want to see here.  A lot more difficult to coordinate all this when there are so few campgrounds open, but of course much easier than in Connecticut or even New Jersey.

I'd intended Plan A to be sightseeing today and extending my stay at this campground a few days, but, because the dogs can't go to day care until next week, I decided I'd head up north for a while and then end the month back down here.  Only then I ran into a problem with my plan, which is that the online reservation site (I hate ReserveAmerica) says I can stay no more than 14 days in a 21-day period, the period apparently beginning with the 1st day I stayed here.

I talked to the very nice woman in the campground office about this and she suggested I not make another reservation but instead just come back as a walk-in camper, and then when my time is up she can extend my stay herself because the campground is empty.  I'm actually the only paying camper here, which makes it really peaceful.  So that's what I'll do.

So Plan B was to spend today in the campground since I'd be on the road tomorrow when my reservation's up, but David had told me he's sending me a batch of mail General Delivery and I decided to pick it up today instead of on the way out of town.  That meant Plan C: a trip in to Laurel, the town about 4 miles from here, where the post office is.

Laurel is very small and old, but large enough to have a pretty big high school.  I know because the post office is right next door and I turned into the wrong driveway and found myself caught in the school-letting-out traffic.  Luckily there were several parking lots big enough for me to turn around in.

My sweet brother told me the DVD fairy had paid a visit, and sure enough, I found a bunch of movies in with my bills.  What a nice brother - like jam on bread, the entertainment with the bill-paying duties.

On the highway the town sits next to, I saw a tanker truck sitting at a red light and the tanker was completely coated with Starlings.  I've never seen anything like it.  There must have been hundreds of them and they flew off as soon as the truck started to move.  I can't imagine what they found attractive about the top of the tanker.

A historical marker in Laurel says it sits on Broad Creek, apparently known since before Europeans got here.  The Nanticoke Indians, part of the Algonquin tribe, knew this area as "the wading place," where they could get across the creek, which looks to me plenty big enough to qualify as a river.  It's just downstream from a small falls.

(I couldn't decide which of these photos best showed Broad Creek by the falls, so I'm adding both.)  As far as I can tell, being "the wading place" is Laurel's claim to fame.  

Sweet potatoes were a prime crop in this area from 1900 to 1940 when a blight hit.  During that period, potato houses were built to store the crop in and now at least 10 of them in Laurel are on the National Register of Historic Places.  I couldn't find a photo of a potato house online that I was allowed to use so I'm adding a link to this website that has a photo.  Rider_Potato_House  I didn't know sweet potatoes were grown in Delaware and I didn't know potato houses existed, so there you go.