Silver Spring to Highland, New York

After several good days that included getting new mufflers, I Left Sliver Spring, Maryland with friend Petey headed to Delaware Water gap then across very northwest Massachusetts  and up into Vermont.  ON the Washington beltway, I 495, in heavy traffic on a bright sunny day.  Onto I 95 and through Baltimore, harbor cranes to the east, the sprawl of the city to the west.  Off the Interstate to Hwy 1, suburbs Kingsville and Bel Air then into rolling countryside much corn and soybeans, many farmsteads selling pumpkins and fall vegetables.  Across the Susquehanna River at Conowingo, big dam and reservoir, then into Pennsylvania and up Hwy 10 through a l;and of big barns, big silos, much corn, hay, dairy cattle, some Amish farms not connected to electricity, boys in Amish dress on bikes.

Through Coatesville, east on Hwy 23, then wandering on narrow country roads north of St peters art town, finally ran into 422 and drove back west a few miles then north to where Daniel Boone was raised until he was 16 and his father pulled up stakes and took the family to the Holston and Clinch River valleys in southern Virginia.  His father was a Quaker elder and it seems successful in Pennsylvania, so why he left is somewhat of a mystery, although he did have to keep apologizing for his daughters marrying outside the church.  There you go.   They had a beautiful, mostly level place here, with a stream, mill, etc.  I don't see they did any better in Virginia, or Kentucky for that matter, but I guess the grass is always greener.

Bought a pamphlet aout ho to make a Pennsylvania black powder rifle - you never know - and after luch drove north through Yellowhouse to Boyertown the up 100 to Emmaus, onto the Interstate around Allentown to Easton, home of the Crayola factory and a questionable christmas claim.

 We walked though the art fair going on in booths by the Delaware  River on a lovely sunny day.

then north on 611 along the river, muddy maybe from recent rains, to the Delaware Water Gap.  Cool  place, where the river wore through the mountains as they were rising, and a busy place for canoes, fishing, hiking, a popular area not that far from New York.  Disappointing Visitor center, very little information about the history or geology, and no good places to see the full river and gap.

Getting toward sunset, we drove up Hwy 209 along the river through small towns, finally took I 84 - the road I started on from Portland - to Matamores at the New York border through more rolling farmland

 across into New York over a hill past Newburgh in the last of the day

then north on 9W just before the Hudson River, driving at sunset with a half moon through a strip of motels and restaurants we found a motel in Highland at the end of a long day on the road.

Cumberland Gap to Silver Spring, Maryland

Rain all through the night and still raining on a dark morning.

I left Cumberland Gap behind and drove north on Hwy 58 up Powell Valley, then over a low pass into the Clinch River valley where Daniel Boone's father took the family when their area of Pennsylvania got too crowded, driving through small towns, more brick churches

more rain

looking without success for a cafe.  Unexpected, how local cafes have disappeared from small towns across especially Missouri and Kentucky, replaced by  Hardees and MacDonalds.   On up to Bluefield, another town that looks like it was once something significant, the same sad song of so many towns across the country.  

A cafe!  Nice talk with the owner, who explained that Bluefield was a big railroad town at the top of the mountains where small feeder lines used to bring coal out of the mountains, put together in trains at Bluefield for the long slide down to ports like Newport News. 

  Now mining in Appalachia is mostly mountaintop removal and much of the coal is going to China, because this is the “clean” coal and helps China meet Kyoto requirements.  Indeed.  I wish I had a month to explore the Allegheny area from West Virginia through Kentucky into Tennessee and really understand coal country, maybe another time.

North on Hwy 460, back into Virginia at Glen Lyn, up a lovely farming valley on Hwy 42 to New Castle, on 311 

began passing the first wood frame churches I can remember seeing

through Catawba through Roanoke, 460 past Lynchburg, up 29 toward Charlottesville, I turned northeast on 6 up onto the top of the Shenandoah Mountains.  North on the Skyline Road, the weather beginning to break, fog and clouds blowing off to the east, but still cold and windy up on top in Loft Mountain campground.

Cold and windy in the night, but brilliant stars and a bloodred sunrise through the trees. 

  Off the mountains and up into Culpepper, where I found several cafes and a bakery in a healthy downtown, surely a reflection of the large and healthy economies in and around Washington DC.  

After breakfast, I followed Hwy 29, Lee Highway, past the Stone House

the Hwy 50 on a long slog through Fairfax and Arlington, across the Potomac and right into the center of Washington DC.

I drove north past the seat of power in the United States

to Sliver Spring and the art, flower, plant and preserves-filled home of Petey and Serge and a few days of visiting old friends before heading north to Vermont.

Fort Boonesboro State Park to Cumberland Gap

After a nice, cool night in the hollow,  woke to cloudy skies feeling like rain.  Packed the tent, up the hill to Fort Boonesborough, a reconstruction(?) of the original 1775 fort that features reenactors doing period crafts and chores.

Skipped the tour and drove eight miles to Richmond, home of a big old courthouse with Civil War history.

I asked someone on the street and was directed to a downtown bakery for breakfast of biscuits and gravy and eggs, with a warm apple turnover for the road.  Out of town running southeast on 421 through good sized mountains, began to rain, cleared enough to see Pilot Knob.

then rain again through Bighill (yes there is one),  Clover Bottom, Gray Hawk, Egypt, and Burning Springs, all very small, not much left,

past more simple brick roadside churches - I think there has been a Baptist church every ten miles along the highway all through Missouri and Kentucky

 through slightly larger Manchester in the rain down Hwy 11 through Bimble and Flat Lick in the rain to Middlesboro, aka “Magic City.”  I didn't see much magic downtown, just another town like so many across Missouri and Kentucky that once had good times and now times have passed them by.  I did learn later that Middlesboro is the only city in the country built in a meteor crater, so perhaps the magic is there waiting to be unleashed.

Out of town a mile to the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, rain, toured the few exhibits, picked up a map and drive to a high, scenic overlook, scenic at least o days when clouds and fog aren't sitting low on the mountains.

Determined to walk in the Path of Daniel Boone, I drove down to a trail head and walked in the rain up over Cumberland Gap

 then back down a mile on the Wilderness Road,

passed Indian Rock, there in Danls day

and down a section  including a section of the original road pretty much as it is when it was finally widened in the 1790's to accommodate wagons.

The highway used to run through  the gap but was replaced by a road in 1996 and in 2002 the Park Service carried out a major project to remove the road and return the area to something like the original landscape.  Wet enough, I drove back down the mountain in the rain

back to the Visitor's Center where I had a nice talk with two men tending a mud-shelled charcoal  kiln, preparing for blacksmitihing and other doings there on the weekend.  Drove a couple of miles north in Virginia to the campground where it was empty and quiet, except for the rain on the van all through the night.