Grace Harbor

We are at the Elks lodge in Havre De Grace, Maryland (map).

We had an uneventful drive yesterday, following US-1 until it intersected I-95, which brought us all the way to Newark, Delaware. Louise had a conference call yesterday afternoon, and we rolled in to the rest area/travel plaza at milepost 2 just as her call was starting, and made about an hour stop there with the dish on line. That also gave me the opportunity to affix our lighted holiday wreath to the grille guard -- an annual tradition for us.

Once the call was over and the dish stowed, we bailed off the Interstate, heading a couple miles south at the very next interchange and picking up US-40, AKA the Pulaski Highway. In addition to being more scenic and more our pace, US-40 bypasses the toll sections of I-95 through Delaware and Maryland, and the toll bridge between Perryville and Havre De Grace is free in the westbound direction.

We did make a quick jog back up towards the Interstate at the town of North East, Maryland, to make a stop at the Flying-J there. We did not take on any diesel -- it was $2.699 in Maryland, a dime more than we saw throughout NJ, and $0.25 higher than Flying-J in Virginia, where we'll be soon enough. But we needed to dump our tanks, having not done so since Cumberland Mountain, in Tennessee, 17 days earlier. The RV dump required a bit of jockeying around to access, but was otherwise convenient, and we also took on a few dozen gallons of water. I had wanted to buy a replacement CB antenna there, as we've more or less destroyed in on low overpasses in the northeast, but they did not stock our size.

We briefly contemplated making the Flying-J our stop for the night. After all, we were already there, and Louise has come down with some sort of cold or flu and really couldn't care less where we're parked right now. But our guide showed this Elks lodge just another twenty minutes down the road, and I felt it would be a bit quieter here, plus we'd have a choice of two or three restaurants, rather than being stuck with Flying-J's house fare. We ate at The Bayou, across the street, which was fine, and were even able to pick up a few items at the grocery store next door.

We're just a couple hundred feet from Amtrak's Northeast Corridor here, and we've been watching the trains go by. We both love the sound of trains, chimes and all, so staying near tracks is enjoyable rather than an annoyance (we know that not everyone shares this view). However, I had forgotten the sounds of high-speed electrified main -- very different from the diesel-powered symphony we are used to. The trains whizz by with just a hum and a whoosh, and an occasional blast of the chimes (I think for the swing bridge across the Susquehanna -- there are no grade crossings on the Corridor).

This morning I will walk over to West Marine, just a block away, to pick up a couple of project items. We're ruminating about staying another night -- we have 15 amps of power here, and we don't want to show up in DC until Louise is feeling a bit better. We'll see how things go by lunch time.