Thursday, 7/3/97
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At 5:00
am, alarms went off. It was time to think of last minute items and eat breakfast. By 6:00 am we were departing. The starting odometer
mileage on The Beast, our 1994 Ford Explorer, was 50228. The Coleman pop-up trailer,
tagging along behind The Beast, has made this trip before in 1985 with the whole family, all six of us. This time it will be just Brennan and Bob, with Bob taking the first driving shift.
We were making good time; at 8:00 am we
were already on I-68 passing Frostburg, Md. At 8:10 am Bob noticed smoke emanating from under The Beast. We got off the Interstate at the next exit that had services. That
next exit is the junction of I-68 with the dreaded US-219 (Inside joke). We stopped
at Diehl's Ford Sales in Grantsville, Md.
at 8:20 am to investigate.
Diagnosis, the front transmission seal was leaking. The service manager,
did not have room in their shop schedule before Monday, so he called all around town to find someone who could do the estimated
5 hour job. Since the next day was Independence Day, nobody would work on it
then. Finally he arranged for a local Garage to take it to be done on Saturday.
We added transmission fluid, then used The Beast to tow the trailer to New Germany State Park. The campground was full but they had an overflow area in
an apple orchard on the side of a hill. It was a lovely field with lots of grass
cover between the young apple trees planted in neat rows, but only a couple of level spots, both already occupied. So we drove part way down the hill to a nearly level spot. The
closest rest rooms and showers and even water supply was a quarter mile walk, or a one mile drive down to the beach house.
After a little work, the trailer was up and level and we unloaded everything we might need for an undetermined period
of time into the trailer and left things like the backpacks in The Beast. Then
we drove back to the dealer to get help dropping off The Beast at the Garage and then back to the dealer to pick up the rental
car, a Ford Escort. Finally, we had done all we could do for The Beast and found
a Sub Shop in Grantsville for lunch at 2:00 p.m.
After lunch we took a driving tour of Savage
River State Forest. We found
four of the five "overlooks" listed on the sketchy map we had picked up at the Ranger Station.
The most interesting one was the Governor Thomas Memorial Overlook. It
had a trail up a hill from the parking area to a rickety tower built on very tall telephone poles with the stairway winding
around the outside of the structure instead of inside like a normal fire tower. From
the swaying top, you could see across the lake to the banks of the dam. We decided
from its condition that the tower honored a governor from pre-revolution years probably built by his brother. Later when we got down to the dam, we could not seem to see the tower.
It should have been visible and we still don't know why we could not see it from anywhere on the dam. Perhaps it had fallen down just after we left.
The Radio in the rental car could only find one station. You guessed it
- Country Music. Brennan put one of our tapes in the car's tape deck.... or better
described as a tape black hole.
The tape was swallowed but did not start to play. Brennan pressed the Eject button. The results were both bad news and good news. The button neither ejected the tape nor did it eject the front seat passenger a la
James Bond. Brennan was thankful for the latter, but the tape seemed to be gone
forever into the depths of the dashboard.
When we got back to New Germany State Park, we drove down to the beach area and used the pay phone to call the campgrounds where we had reservations for
the next two nights to change plans. We told them to hold the deposit but that
we would call later when we knew what days we would be arriving. Back at the
Coleman trailer, we settled down for guitar strumming and dinner. We decided
on ham and cheddar cheese sandwiches. We finally bedded down at 10:30 p.m. with concerns
for what the delay of two days would do to our Plan P itinerary out west.
