With thanks and credit to John Denver, as we move north, each area is even more beautiful than the last.  North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland-Delaware-New Jersey, Pennsylvania.  What a treat!  And we were in New York for a week or more several years back, and we’re already in love with that state………….what a bunch of lucky ducks we are to live in the United States.  I write this sitting in a grove of trees covered with new leaves, the afternoon sunlight filtering through, listening to the birds chirping (and the woodpeckers pecking; I know, getting kind of trite in here, isn’t it).  There are chipmunks everywhere, many of them little guys chasing each other around like all kids do.

So how come some places are filled with chipmunks, others with squirrels?  Does anyone know the answer?  In any case, the cats are going nuts.  We’ve bought a little tent-like affair to put them in outside.  It’s a stitch.  The cats sit very quietly watching all the animals out there.  Then, suddenly, yesterday, a chipmunk got too close.  All of a sudden, Jeremy lunged for it, tipping the entire tent ass over teakettle.  The chipmunk skittered away and Jeremy looked quite disgusted.  Wonder what he’d do if one of the rascals chewed a hole and came inside the tent!

We are in the Allegheny National Forest, close to the river; near Warren, Pennsylvania.  We took the motorcycle out today for a ride; it’s incredible.  The rolling hills of continuously changing shades of green, with yellow, blue, pink, white wildflowers everywhere (cows in the fields standing knee-deep in new grass and flowers).  The trees with new leaves, combined with the darker pine trees; hill after hill after hill.  We are camping right off a scenic by-way, and the beauty is everywhere.  Our overriding plan for this year was to follow spring north, and we’ve been successful beyond anything we could have imagined.  Right around the corner from us is blooming dogwood, the same dogwood that we saw in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi three months ago.  (To this day I cannot spell Mississippi in my mind without saying:  M, straight letter, crooked letter, crooked letter, straight letter, crooked letter, crooked letter, straight letter, hump-back, hump-back, straight letter.  Am I the only one?)

Our last message was sent from New Jersey, along the coast.  I finally got my feet wet in the Atlantic Ocean.  We, with our friends Tom and Pat Wardell, visited Cape May, at the very bottom tip of New Jersey.  This is one pretty little place!  Cape May was bypassed by life about 100 hundred years ago, and has retained its charming seaside village appearance; there are many, many lovely homes from the late 1800s, all charming, many of them B&Bs, and the ice cream at Charlie’s is to die for.  And then, and then……we went walking on the beach.  I could picture myself in a long dress, with a parasol, strolling along the boardwalk.  The sand is white, the beach chairs are pretty blue, the sky was blue-grey and a breeze was blowing.  A perfect setting.  I rolled up my jeans, waded in, and had a ball.  For a bit, anyway; who ever said the Atlantic was warmer than the Pacific?  But a good time was had by all. 

And there’s a cool lighthouse there, too.

Leaving New Jersey we journeyed down into Delaware and to the capital, Dover.  A charming town, the first capital in the United States.  Small, with many old buildings beautifully maintained.  We searched everywhere for the capital building, but there doesn’t seem to be one, only what they call the Legislative Building.  Delaware is a hidden treat; we saw few people and the countryside was grand.  There is a scenic by-way you can take that heads south from Wilmington along the marshy delta coast; boggy, sedgy, many turtles and marsh birds; beautiful.  You get to cross the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, a deep water channel that connects these two large masses of water; very impressive big bridges with a great view.  One of them had large towers shaped like sails on a sailboat.  It was quite lovely.

Highway sign:  HOMEWORK STINKS?  TRY CHANGING DIAPERS.

From Dover we journeyed back through Wilmington and visited two very special places:  Winterthur Gardens, and the Brandywine River Museum.  These were a dip into two other worlds, both fascinating.  Winterthur (pronounced without the “h”) is one of the Du Pont homes outside the city.  The possibly better known home/gardens is Longwood, which is nearby.  But Winterthur’s specialty is that the gardens are in a free-form, natural state, with settings and vistas near a working farm area.  Areas were created to achieve certain very low-key effects; nothing formalized about these gardens.  The azaleas were in bloom, and the tag end of the lilacs; and the most incredible dogwood I’ve ever seen.  Dogwood beside the road is lovely, ethereal, peaking out from among the greenery around it.  These trees were cultivated to show how nature could be enhanced.  Other areas were devoted to cone-bearing trees, pines among them, to wander in and appreciate the smells and shade provided.  And the peonies!  I could go on and on; we were delighted with our time there, and plan to go back at different times of the year.  Each month is different at Winterthur.  Oh, and I forgot to say that the family home (one of them) is there; it has 175 rooms.  And this in the days before we wore beepers!

Brandywine River Museum was very special in its own way.  The museum is in an old grist mill, recently restored, with bare beams and white walls.  It houses an important collection of American art, including major works by NC Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth, three generations of work by one family of incredibly talented artists.  We both enjoyed the exhibits a great deal; and the setting was incomparable.

Our destination after leaving Delaware was Pittsburgh, home of the Pirates and a baseball game.  We traveled the Pennsylvania Turnpike; what a disaster!  There’s one road that needs to be abandoned and replaced!  And it costs money to ride.  Wow, California’s missing something here.  But there were great signs put up along the road, asking people to be considerate, slow down, and be cool:  HAPPINESS IS NEVER HAVING TO SEE YOUR AIRBAG; SPREAD THE LOVE – LET SOMEBODY MERGE; and DRIVE FRIENDLY.  Driving across Pennsylvania was beautiful, however, rolling hills, large dairy farms, many Amish and Mennonite communities, clean, neat, a joy to traverse.  And the ballgame?  The Pirates still stink; can’t play worth beans.  We saw them the opening day of spring training, and they weren’t much better this week.  But we had a splendid time.  It’s great fun not to care who wins, just wanting to see a fun game.  The park is new, lovely, and similar to Pac Bell Park in San Francisco.  It was a balmy evening, and a huge full moon rose up and shimmered over the city skyline beyond the right field fence.  Who could ask for anything more?  The park is right downtown, next to where the Steelers play, and you can see all the bridges while you’re watching the game.  Tres cool.

Truck on the road said his company did “seamless spoutings” – gutters and downspouts???????????  By the way, Pennsylvania state troopers wear sexy uniforms, and they are studs!!!!!!!!!!  (Rick says we need a large disclaimer on the side of the coach:  the opinions expressed by some members of the family are not necessarily echoed or endorsed by others.)

But somebody is digressing……..Leaving Pittsburgh took us winding up into the Alleghenies, the lovely mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania (see above for platitudes).  Did we say mountains?  Hogwash!  There ain’t no such animal on the East Coast.  But you knew that.  Undulating, rolling bouncing bumps on the horizon is closer to the truth; but who cares?  They are indeed lovely.  We camped in the middle of a glade, rode the scenic by-ways on our trusty steed, and had a hugely good time.  The campgrounds in this national forest are charmingly named:  Dewdrop, Heart’s Content, and Timberdoodle Flats, for a few.

When you head east out of the Allegheny Mountains, you get to travel on US 6, a charming, scenic road full of small, well-maintained towns, each with a cemetery that appears older than time itself it seems.  County seats with old courthouses, freshly painted old houses currently serving as B&Bs; it’s a great ride. Last time I was on this road was in the late 70’s and it was memorable then.  There’s a lot of local pride in these towns, and they care about their history. 

With a current goal of ending up in Lake George in New York, we started meandering in a northeasterly direction, visiting Cooperstown on the way.  By now it must be obvious to each of you that we’re baseball fans; it was important to us to make the pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, which we had visited once before in 1994.  It’s a great spot for lovers of the game.  Cooperstown is a beautiful small town on the edge of a lake, so the setting isn’t too shabby.  Many, many hotels and B&Bs have a 1900 feel to them, and there are several shops selling neat stuff.  A reminder for us that we were in New York was that you could get anything you wanted saying Yankees or Mets, but Giants?  Who Giants????? It was fun.  Late in the day, getting ready to push on to a further destination for the night, a vicious thunderstorm came through – LARGE wind, trees going over, lightening and thunder, all the usual suspects.  Rick absolutely soaked himself to the skin running back to the coach because we had left some windows open a bit for the cats.  He had to completely change clothes before walking back, fortunately after the rain stopped.  Later on a second round of the same weather came through so we stayed put in the parking lot of the Chamber of Commerce (they were extremely gracious).  Sirens and fire trucks for quite a bit; then later the rain totally cleared, the evening was beautiful, and we walked around town enjoying ourselves.  What a change!

We have now reached our destination at Lake George – Americade, the largest touring motorcycle rally in the nation (honest, they keep saying so, so it must be true!).  zillions of bikes and bikers; but much more of a family event than Daytona was last March, so it has an entirely different (and friendlier) feeling.  Rick is out today taking demo rides on the latest beasties, and tomorrow we’ll be attacking the vendor booths with a vengeance.  We state emphatically that we don’t need a thing, but ask me later what all we bought!  Are you any different?

Oh yes, one other adventure on our way here:  we stopped at Howe Caverns.  One of the schlockiest sightseeing places around (ah, Rick says it isn’t that bad), but we stopped, just like we did in 1994, to take appropriate pictures and buy appropriate postcards for family members.  I stayed in the coach with a bag over my head.

From here we are going to two consecutive motor coach rallies.  A Trek Fun Club event about 100 miles west of Lake George, and then we’ll convoy down to near Hershey, PA for a NE regional Safari rally.  We are looking forward to a chance to see some of the friends we met at the Safari rally we attended in Georgia back in March.  We love you and hope you are still enjoying our letters.  For those of you who have visited these areas, we hope you are reliving your own memories and that they are all quite wonderful.

In closing, you may recall that in our last message we described the way that they use abbreviations on highway signs much more back here than at home.  We made particular mention of Del Mem Br, which stands for the Delaware Memorial Bridge.  Well, driving along a day or two after that, Rick burst out in song with the following ditty – picture the rolling of eyes from the cats and me.

Sing along if you like – to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas (or anything else that comes to mind, it really doesn’t make much difference) – all together, follow the bouncing ball…

We remember Del Member for all that he stood for

We know he stood for Delaware, but there’s even more

He also stood for Memorial, and Bridge, but that’s not all

‘Cause most of all Del Member stood for shorter words for all.

Rick and Kathy

See more photos from 2002-2003

Return to Lower 48 Page                                Return to Home Page