Delaware - Day 18 - the drive back north

Lums Pond State Campground
Friday, 18 January 2019

today's route

Tonight I'm intending to stay in the campground I stayed in when I first came to the Delaware.  I don't have a reservation for tonight but I can see in their website they're about as empty as they were when I stayed there before, so I'm not worried about getting a spot.

That campground has decent water that I can fill my tank with.  It has asphalt pads at each site so I can clean my windows without my stool sinking into the muddy ground.  It has wastewater dumping ability at each site so I'll have water to clean out my hose.  It has plenty of room to walk the dogs in.  And it's not far from a liquor store that, at my suggestion, started ordering Hogue Sauvignon Blanc (a Washington winery) and Teachers Scotch, so I may as well stock up on what I like and not have to settle for whatever I can find when I get to Maryland.   So with all these advantages, that's where I aimed for.

I passed a sign on the road saying Dundalk is Maryland's most caring city.  Since I'm not actually in Maryland - or even on a road heading that way, that seemed odd to me.  Now that I've located it on the map it seems even odder: Dundalk is on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  What on earth would they want to do with an apparently pointless sign set up in a different state?  Another sign said the "caring" part refers to the number of nurses and others in the caring professions, which makes it seem even more pointless - I'd been envisioning a bunch of friendly townspeople.

I passed another sign saying Seaford has been voted the 28th best small town in the US.  This sign has a little more point, since Seaford is a town about 10 miles north of last night's campground.  28th, huh?

Several times I've seen signs directing people to a site on the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad.  Delaware, along with Maryland and Pennsylvania, has a byway designating sites of interest on the railroad path.  Delaware was part of the Union during the Civil War, but in general people sympathized with slave owners.  But given its position on the border between the north and the south, it had an active underground railroad.  They estimate more than 3000 people came through Delaware on the way to freedom.

I knew I was near the Chesapeake when I started seeing signs saying "no fishing or crabbing from the bridge."  I didn't see many prohibitions against crabbing in Texas.

I saw a field that was hosting hundreds of Canada geese.  I've never seen as many geese as I'm seeing this month.

I heard on the radio that Australia's having a heat wave and the overnight temperature was 97°.  During the night!  Bet folks weren't getting much sleep.

I saw a license plate holder for Gregory Automotive Group: Friends don't let friends drive junk.

Arriving at the northern campground I found I could get my previous campsite back again.  Still a fair amount of snow around the campground - much more than at the southern campground where most of it had melted in the last few days.

The nice woman at the last campground told me the reason this northern one is so fancy is that it got a major renovation.  She said that before, it only had about 5 sites that had electricity and, since it's so close to the University of Delaware, it used to get a pretty rowdy bunch of campers.  But with the renovations, she said it's getting a different clientele - like me, I guess.  It is a nice place now, and they only charge $5/night more than the less distinguished campgrounds.

The dogs were happy to get to a new campsite that was nonetheless familiar, and I was delighted to get all these chores done.  We're heading down near Dover tomorrow.