By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers
I prepared an article years ago about the types of places you can park your rig, updating it several times — everything from private campgrounds to national parks to retail outlets and many more – 17 more to be exact. If you’d like a copy, please email your request to [email protected]. It’s free.
Annapolis, capital of Maryland. What a neat place! We spent a day walking the streets of this interesting town, reveling in all-thing-Annapolis: historic homes and buildings, including those housing state
From left, "Big Al" picks out crabs for us in St. Michaels, a town that celebrates its seafood, and we're ready for a feast in Annapolis
government, the Chesapeake Bay waterfront, seafood, shops, and, most notable of all, the U.S. Naval Academy. Very prestigious, and the midshipmen are all so handsome; that is, all except the midshipwomen, who
Midshipmen -- with female middies in background at right
are dolls. I don’t mean to be sexist about this, but we were astounded to see how many of the middies are female. And they all, both women and men, look so young and fresh.
During the past week, we have qualified to put three more stickers on our map of states visited as RVers. We stayed across the Potomac in Maryland while visiting Washington, D.C. Then, we crossed the never-ending Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis (really only 4.3 miles, but it goes on and on) to the Maryland peninsula, where we found Eaton inconvenient for RVing, but stopped in wonderfully quaint St. Michaels to sight-see and pick up a dozen live blue-claw crabs, which Monique boiled in Louisiana spices for our dinner.
Here are two tips at this point: 1) visit St. Michaels when you in the area, and park at the Maritime Museum lot while there. We got there too late to go in the museum, but it looks interesting.
Next tip, Port Deposit, Maryland, caught our attention. Unfortunately, we were pressed for time while going through the town, wanting to reach our next campground by nightfall, but we wish we could have stopped. Why? Because of all the structures made of local stone and a history that beckoned us to learn more, which I did by researching it online.
Built by the Naval Academy for the composer of "Anchors Aweigh," this is an excellent example of historic Northeast homes.
On the other hand, every village, hamlet, settlement, community, town and city we pass through is “historic,” most founded in the 17th Century. It’s comforting to know that these folks value their heritage enough to preserve and celebrate it.
We put down stabilizers that night at the beautiful wooded Trap Pond State Park in Delaware. It’s a fisherman’s haven, with a large, very inviting lake in which to drop a line. [And that brings up an RVing travelers’ problem: buying fishing licenses as out-of-state residents in each state visited. It’s much cheaper to go to a restaurant, where you know you’ll have fish for supper.]
With rain making our Delaware campground visit less enjoyable, I decided that we would do better using a rainy day to move on. We set our GPS for Codorus State Park near Hanover, Pennsylvania. Codorus is a huge, beautiful state park that wraps itself around a lake, where there are boat launches and rentals, hiking and birding opportunities like we have seldom seen in our years on the road. We give this park an “A,” losing points only because there are no water or sewer hook-ups. It’s still good.
The view from our trailer in Trap Pond State Park, Delaware
We’re now outside of Baltimore at Patapsco Valley State Park, again with electric hookups but no water or sewer. This park extends along the Patapsco River for 32 miles. A road sign indicated a left turn to reach the park, while our GPS urged us forward. We followed the sign and ended up 20 miles from the campground. Oh, well, we always enjoy the journey.
Monique doesn’t want me to sign off without mentioning the glorious landscapes we have encountered. Every shade of green provided verdant backdrops behind the whites, pinks, reds and yellows of flowers everywhere. For most of our journey, we’ve listened to the guidance of our GPS, who routes us on scenic byways, rather than the four lanes of asphalt traveled by most. Most stunning were the miles of Maryland peninsula north of the Bay Bridge, where we think the locals had never seen an RV pass their homesteads.
We are now about 40 days away from the start of our caravan trek into the Canadian Maritimes. We join up with a Fantasy RV Tours trip that takes us up into the eastern provinces of Canada for 48 days, after which we will tour on our own through Quebec and Ontario for a few weeks.
But before that, we’ll cross into New York and then stop in all the New England states, not only to finish filling out our U.S. map of states visited, but more importantly, to get a sampling of each one. Hawaii will have to wait a year or two.
P.S. Can’t end without mentioning that we have had cellphone reception in every campsite we’ve inhabited for the past 22 camping spots since leaving California almost two months ago.
Don’t forget to email us for the list of camping choices at [email protected].
From the “Never-Bored RVers,” We’ll see you on down the road.
Our site at Codorus State Park in Pennsylvania. Despite the perspective, we were very level.
© All photos by Barry Zander. All rights reserved
Because of the numerous Spam comments on this site, the comments section has been deactivated. Please email us at [email protected] and I will pass along your comments. Learn about Alaska and see travel photos at ontopoftheworld.bz (and much more to come when time allows).
COMMENTS FROM PREVIOUS POSTS:
FROM BRUCE CROMER: I appreciate the comments about when newspapers were newspapers. I served a six-year apprenticeship to learn how to make those newspapers. I’d like to see the old linotype machine in operation in a museum or in a shop somewhere. You reported it and we turned it into print with the use of hot lead back then. My Dad also ran linotype machines in his day. We both worked at the Atlanta Constitution and Atlanta Journal at the time. Thanks for the memories.
BARRY’S NOTE: I was there from the beginning of the transition years from hot type to computerization, which unfortunately meant the end of long careers for many of the folks in the press room. I’m glad I experienced those days, but it’s like the era of driving with stick shift and no air conditioning – progress makes for a better world in this case.