Sunday, May 31st

Heaven

The weatherman had claimed that yesterday had been the last nice day. A cold front was supposed to move in. Yet when I left the hotel, it was still mercilessly sunny and already quite hot. I decided to shun the motorway as it was drawn in green for a stretch indicating a road toll. There was a regular highway running closer to the coast which is where I went. It, too, was rather quite fast. It crossed through Aberdeen without much fuss and arrived at Havre de Grace. A sign suggested that one should call a number and then wait for an escort, but apparently, this was only for crossing the following bridge with certain vehicles rather then of the ‘for a good time, call this number’ variety.

The next sign announced that the bridge was eight dollars. Darn. Since I had plenty of time, I amended my plans and turned north. The map showed another crossing perhaps ten miles upstream. Incidentally, toll is colloquial German for wonderful. Quite fitting in a sarcastic sort of way.

And so I left the coast for the hills and farms and forest of the hinterland. I soon arrived at the river crossing. It turned out not just to be a bridge but also a dam and a hydroelectric plant. Lots and lots of fantastic concrete. To the left was a lake, to the right the overflow basin, currently dry and littered with boulders.

Both river and dam were united in being neither spellable nor pronounceable: this was the Conowingo Dam over the Susquehanna River. I didn’t mind much, though, as the crossing was free.

I was now travelling on US Route 1, the north-south highway that started all the way down in Key West and would continue to the northernmost tip of Maine. It was running towards the east here for a while but soon turned north again. In a slight navigational mishap, I missed that turn, requiring me to switch onto an eastbound state route.

I quickly recovered and, while turning onto the right road at a roundabout, the last of a group of motorcyclists decided to cut in close in front of me. This seemed an awfully risky move. But perhaps there was an unwritten (or even written) rule saying that a group of bikers should be allowed to stick together. There was plenty more bikers to test this rule with as I entered Rising Sun, yet another town of small streets and small houses, but they all behaved.

By now I needed to get some fuel. As the prices displayed at the petrol stations I passed kept rising, I started a game of petrol chicken. In Elkton, I invariably lost and paid the prize.

South of Elkton, at the north entrance to Chesapeake City, the road suddenly started to climb onto a very tall, very narrow bridge. THis was the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, connecting Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay for the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The canal started a landscape of bays and boats and marinas. It peaked after Fredricktown with a drawbridge over the Sassafras River. It had just closed again as I arrived, avoiding a delay but leaving me stuck behind a long line of cars. The river was an ocean of bobbing little white boats, moored to both sides of the bridge.

Signs started to appear demanding to ‘Safe our farms.’ Judging by the pictograms, they wanted their farms to be saved from the horrors of wind farms. Another slogan was ‘Keep Kent scenic.’ Even though the road atlas seemed to agree and had marked this piece of road as scenic, too, I couldn’t quite see where this was special. The land was flat, there were farms and forests like everywhere else in Maryland. The only difference, really, was an annoying array of protest signs.

Chestertown, which had its very own drawbridge but hadn’t drawn as many boat owners, Kingstown, with a size that suggested it be Kingsvillage really, Centreville, cockily sticking to British spelling, and I arrived at the main highway having come over by (toll) bridge from Maryland’s capital Annapolis and, ultimately, Washington.

I now had a choice of turning east towards Delware or keep heading south. Since I had plenty of time left, I choose the latter. Better yet, about ten miles south, a road forked of west to a set of peninsulas and islands in Chesapeake Bay that looked as if it would provide a lovely side trip. I drove around Easton, thanks to misreading a sign on a slightly too large arc on tiny roads. I recovered nicely, though, and soon was in St Michaels, central town of the area. It seemed to consist mostly of shops selling antiques or ‘fun things’ as one of them put it. There were a brewery and winery right next to each other, not really helping the undecided punter.

The road turned really quiet as it continued west, eventually arriving at yet another drawbridge. Across was Tilghman Island, its messy yet somehow cute village right after the bridge. Through town and a little onwards it unceremoniously ended at the gates of Black Walnut Point. There was a parking lot and a naval research facility between dense forest and the sea. Nothing much to do then turn around. I wasn’t the only traveller being somewhat disappointed by the outcome of the idea to follow the road all the way to its end.

There was, however, an alternative option: Turn right at the next stop sign. Beyond the road become narrower and narrower as it meandered through a tiny village of pretty homes. It ended at wooden jetty in a parking lot so small, it needed a dedicated turn around area.

The jetty lead out into a little bay, fingers of land grabbing at the water from both left and right. The darker green of their trees and the lighter green of the grass behind me found their equivalent in the lighter and darker blue of sky and sea. The parking lot was framed by unpretentious pink of rose bushes in bloom. There were more wooden jetties and, set a little back, houses. It was calm and quiet, the world at ease in a tranquil siesta. I sat there on the wooden planks for quite some time seriously wondering what it took to get a house here.

Finally on the way back into the village, a sign mocked me announcing that waterfront lots were for sale. More immediately I needed batteries for the dictaphone, though. I stopped at a local store and found out that people around here weren’t the most friendly lot, at least not towards strangers or, at the very least, not towards me. Brought back into the real world thus, I left the island, after waiting for the drawbridge to open and close again.

I headed east now, through Easton where I only got a little lost and across another drawbridge, their novelty slowly wearing off. In the middle of a field stood an old mansion entirely overgrown by thorny bushes, surely called Sleeping Beauty Manor. It must have been wonderful ground for the kids of the surrounding homes.

Soon the governor of Delaware welcomed me personally to his state, or at least he had a sign put up doing so. The mandatory new state landscape check: it was still very flat. Crop farming dominated, supported by the ever dominant pivot irrigation systems, interrupted by small forests. The houses along the road seemed a little less opulent then they had been in Maryland, although, admittedly, I hadn’t really paid attention on the last miles any more. They were smaller, the paint worn off, the surrounding plots smaller, too.

Georgetown, first city, confirmed the impression. It was difficult to put the finger on it and perhaps I was being unfair. But somehow the city lacked the well-conserved air and unconscious green of the Maryland towns.

The land besides the last couple of miles to Lewes had been farmland not too long ago. Something had changed recently, though. Little prefabricated communities of housing estates had sprung up everywhere, cheerful signs with kitschy names pointing towards them. They were so new that they consisted solely of a street looped through a field and entirely too big houses dropped everywhere. The developers didn’t bother with landscaping, leaving behind a somewhat sterile moonscape. Here and their, companion developments of offices and shops had been or were currently being plunked beside the road.

The likely reason for the sudden popularity of the area likely was Rehoboth Beach, a resort town less than a dozen miles away. In the misguided attempt to save some money, I had booked a motel room that turned out to be right next to the main road towards this very popular destination. Little more than a cardboard box—though admittedly a really nice one—beside a never sleeping road wasn’t the best prerequisite for a good night’s sleep.