Day 35: Goodbye Delaware: we’ll miss your flatness

We did it!  All of our stuff is stuffed in the truck and we can still out of the rear view mirror. Mission accomplished!

The Pasleys have a long-running practice of stretching our hands across the dashboard in a competition to be the first to enter the next state, county, etc. However, as we left Delaware at the same place on Route 404 where we entered a month, ago Betsy and I jutted our arms backward in an attempt to be the last to leave Delaware.

It really was a “small wonder”.

As I have said before the thing that surprised me the most about Delaware was the amount of agriculture and the rural character of much of the state. Simply put; Delaware was a lot more like Texas than I expected it to be.

Another thing that surprised me was how much the roads in Delaware resemble the roads in Texas.

First of all they are in very good condition and the parts that are not seem to be under construction; often with the contractor working under the lights at night, a practice pioneered in Texas.

Like Texas highways, the Delaware state roads often have wide shoulders.

There are some significant differences however. Delaware is far more aggressive in striping those wide shoulders for bike lanes, and requiring developers to provide bike lanes, than is Texas.

Another noticeable difference is the attention paid to drainage.

TxDOT does a spectacular job of draining its rural highways, using a center crown and what we in Texas call a “bar ditch”, which is essentially a grassy swale on either side of the highway that removes the water. Unless there is a flood condition it is rare to encounter standing water on a TxDOT facility.

Delaware roads are much different in this regard.

Most of Delaware is flat as a pancake. Thus, you would think, that if any state should be concerned about drainage it would be Delaware. But that is not the case. DelDOT roads are virtually flat and there are no bar ditches. As a result, even a relatively light shower produces puddles in the main lanes.

Another huge difference between DelDot and TxDot is speed limits. As a general rule I would say the speed limits in Delaware (and Maryland too) are set about 10 mph less than they should be. DelDot loves to change the speed limit; from 25, then 30, then 35, then 40 - all in a half-mile stretch. After that you can go miles without seeing any signage to reinforce the existing speed limit. As a result, as the locals whizzed around me, I was often left wondering if the speed limit had changed and I missed the sign.

We stopped in Annapolis for lunch with Tex and Laurel and then headed into the Maryland panhandle on I-70, crossing into Pennsylvania about 5 p. m.

The change in topography was dramatic. In this part of the Maryland it can be a real challenge just to find a flat spot.

We arrived at the peak of Mt. Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania, about 5:30 and were treated to some spectacular views from an observation tower that allows one to see out over the treetops.

It was windy and there was a fairly intense rain shower on a portion of I-70, but by the time we reached the highpoint it was clear and quite comfortable.

We twisted and turned through hills and farms to the Flight 93 Memorial, but arrived at 7:30 and it closed at 7. Twenty more miles of twists and turns and nice farms and pleasant vistas brought us to Johnstown and the perfect trifecta of a Holiday Inn Express, a beer store and a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The trifecta had a downside however, because of Pennsylvania’s liquor laws. Only cases of beer could be sold at the beer store. Normally that would not have been a problem but with space in the truck at a premium we passed on a case of Pennsylvania beer.

Day 33 & 34: The Beverly Hillbillies visit Brooklyn

Pretend that Jethro Bodine and Elly May Clampett  from the Beverly Hillbillies took a trip to New York City to visit the biggest overachiever from Jethro’s class of 1973 back at Hillbilly High and you have a pretty good idea of what it was like when Dave and Betsy visited Dave’s high school friend Debbie Buell and her husband Charlie Henry in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn this weekend. The only thing missing was granny sitting in a rocking chair strapped to the bed of the pickup truck.

We dined at an Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, strolled the Brooklyn promenade, watched the Yankees embarrass the hapless Mets, drank strong coffee while reading the Times, and sat on the stoop of the Henry’s brownstone watching the neighborhood walk by.

Sort of like an episode of Law & Order without the crime.

Along the way we found time to catch up on the events that have taken place in our various lives since 1973, much of it spent bragging about our kids. Fortuitously we got a first-hand report about the youngest Henry from Maggie herself; a firecracker columnist for the Cornell Daily Sun and a Big Red debate team member who appears to be on a fast track to matching her mother as the ultimate “power woman” (but only if she wants to).

The air crackled with Mag’s electricity.

Betsy and I packed up and left the condo in Lewes Saturday morning with a twinge or two of nostalgic regret, but mostly with a deep-seated concern about the looming question: “how in the hell are we going to get all of this crap stuffed into the truck?”

The short answer is, we didn’t; at least, not yet. In classic Pasley fashion, we punted; leaving the bicycles chained to the rack at the condo and dropping off some of our bulkier items at the Realtor’s office (story to be continued in a future post).

But even with those offloads we still had a mish-mash of detritus piled inside the cab of the truck. After we parked on the street in Brooklyn the detritus began screaming out to passersby; “break a window and steal us.” That prompted us to haul enough of it inside the house to be mildly embarrassed and further reinforce the hillbilly stereotype.

After a month in laid-back Lewes, New York City was a sensory overload.

There are a mind-boggling number of shops and eateries within walking distance (who in their right mind would drive and give up their parking spot) and seemingly more people milling about in a three-block area than in Delaware’s three counties combined.

Because of our extensive exposure to Law & Order we weren’t too surprised by anything we saw in New York - except for the overtly-friendly staff at Yankee stadium.

I’m serious. As many blog readers know, Betsy and I often critique customer service; both good and bad. Having complained so often about the latter I don’t want to give the impression that I am knocking the Yankees for their explicit attempts to provide the former; however, the gap between the effort to appear customer-friendly and the actual rendering of a tangible service was a little creepy.

Other observations from our 26-hour visit include the impossibly high ceilings in the Henry’s brownstone; my gleeful perception that the mighty Yankees’ $1.5 billion stadium is not as good a place to watch a ballgame as the hapless Mets’ $800 million CitiField; the huge chasm Debbie crosses every day between her life as a partner in a Wall Street law firm and her life as a mom in Brooklyn; that a lot more blue-state Yankee fans sing the national anthem than red-state Astros fans; that New Yorkers walk a hell of a lot, and; that there are a hell of a lot more fat people in San Antonio than there are in New York City.

Note to self: could there possibly be a connection between the last two observations?

I’m also debating which is more surprising to me; how far Debbie has come from the farm where she grew up outside of Liberty, Missouri, or how close it still seems to be.

The one thing that did shock me about Debbie was the intensity of her crush on Derek Jeter and the depth of her disdain for poor A-Rod, whose at-bats have been consigned to the lowly status of “blackberry-checking-time.”

When it came time to leave and we had hauled the last pillowcase out of the brownstone, stuffed the last bag of leftover mini-wheats into the truck and strapped on granny’s rocking chair we headed out on the BQE, crossed the Verazano bridge (for the measly toll of $13; it’s $8 going into the city?) and fired down the New Jersey turnpike like a couple of veterans.

Before long we were back on home turf, back in Delaware.

Day 32: Hooked on birding?

No, not really hooked; but we did go to the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge east of Dover.

We have become, perhaps, a little more appreciative of bird watching during our stay here in what must be one of the best bird-watching areas in the country.

Bombay Hook is basically a huge wetland, much of it salt marshes, and it is managed to provide habitat for the hundreds of thousands of birds that migrate up and down the east coast every year.

We saw a bald eagle, numerous herons, the ever-present red-wing black bird and – our personal favorite – the semipalmated sandpiper (we just like the name).

On the way home we stopped off at the Fordham Brewery in Dover and got a personal tour from Jim, one of the owners. And I do mean personal, opening boxes to smell various hops, looking inside the freshly-cleaned kettles, etc.

The interesting thing about Fordham is that it started as the Ram’s Head brewpub in Annapolis, a favorite hangout for many Johnnies. Jim our tour guide still lives in Annapolis.

It seems like a very nice, efficient operation and the beer was quite tasty. 

The photo below is "Hop2D2" the device they have fabricated from available materials to add hops flavor to the beer.

A few weeks ago we drove past an auto repair shop and Betsy noted the oddity that there was a funnel cake stand in the parking lot.

The stand was closed and it was one of those portable types that can be pulled on a trailer so I opined that it was probably just parked there. Surely they were not selling funnel cakes at this location.

Guess I was wrong.

This was our last full day in Lewes and it rained off and on and then really poured after we got home. It was the most rain we have had since we’ve been here.

This weekend we are going to New York City to visit an old high school friend and go to the Yankees game on Sunday. We will come back to Lewes on Sunday to pick up the bicycles and other stuff we don’t want to leave in the truck parked on the street. We will depart Monday for home; via baseball games in Cleveland and Detroit. We should be home by Memorial Day.

Because we will be on the road my postings from here on out may be sporadic.

Day 31: Sweden attacks, Lewes Navy responds

When we looked out in the bay and saw the Kalmar Nyckle under full sail we took matters into our own hands; renting some kayaks and going out to sea to repel the invasion.

We also found time to stop on an isolated section of beach to look at an old shipwreck and save the lives of several horseshoe crabs (the Delaware State Marine Animal). These odd creatures come in on the high tide to lay their eggs in the sand and, as the tide goes out, some of them get turned upside down far from the water and unable to right themselves.

We went along and righted/"saved" a dozen or more. As you can see in the photos and the video, the crabs took a slow and sometimes circuitous route back to the sea.

We also found time to start packing (yes, we have to leave on Saturday morning) and enjoyed another awesome sunset.

Note: That is our condo in the background. The second floor porch on the far left is ours.

In addition to fending off the Swedes Betsy also took time to scare off a ferry full of New Jerseyians.

Apparently until a storm four years ago this 19th century shipwreck was in one piece.

All things considered, it has held up pretty well.

A grateful, righted Horseshoe Crab makes its way back to the sea.

After this u-turn.

Day 30: Straddling the transpeninsular line

Another forecast of almost certain rain produced a few drops and turned into a stellar, sunny afternoon.

We re-traced some steps from a previous trip to Fenwick Island on the extreme southeast corner of Delaware to look at a lighthouse we had driven close to on a previous trip but had not seen.

The lighthouse is in Delaware, but only by a few feet. It fronts on a street that is in Maryland and sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood that includes the two former lightkeepers' houses that are now private residences.

In front of the lighthouse is one of the original markers used to delineate the Delaware-Maryland border; with the seal of the Penn family on the Delaware side and the Calvert family on the Maryland side (photo shows the Calvert side).

From there we drove due west to the town of Delmar, which is home to the Evolution brewery, makers of some very fine beers. The seal on the city truck in the brewery parking lot tells you everything you need to know about Delmar.

It was a beautiful drive home, partially along the Mason-Dixon line, where a beautiful sunset awaited.

Before we left for the trip I jogged to the state park and Betsy biked there. Along the way Betsy was able to snap this photo of one of the animals in the park as it raced past me while I was jogging.

 

  

Note: I have posted the text of the SJC commencement address on a separate page which can be found at the top of the blog and accessed by mouse click.

Day 29: Touring the first town in the first state

We finally got around to visiting some of the museums and historic sites that are right under our noses here in Lewes.

I’ve mentioned some of this in earlier posts but Lewes was “discovered” in 1609 by Henry Hudson (there were, of course, native people who had been living here for centuries). Hudson was looking for a northwest passage to the Pacific ocean and was probably a little miffed when the promising Delaware Bay turned out to be the Delaware River, and New York harbor turned into the Hudson River.

Although he did not find what he was looking for, Hudson claimed the area for the Netherlands (Hudson was English but was employed by the Dutch) and called the two places north bay and south bay.

A year later an Englishman by the name of Samuel Argall sailed into the "south bay" and he named the cape here in honor of the governor of Virginia at the time, Lord de la Ware. The cape was eventually renamed Henlopen, after a place in the Netherlands, but the name Delaware stuck and was eventually applied to the larger area that included the bay, the river and, ultimately, the state.

Hudson supposedly suggested the spot in the south bay that is now Lewes might be a good place for a whaling station and, in 1631, two or three dozen guys showed up to start one; calling the place Zwanendael in the Walvis. Zwanendael means valley of the swan and Walvis means whale (and it was also the name of the the ship that brought them across the Atlantic).

When a supply ship showed up a year later all of the guys were dead, apparently the result of a “cultural misunderstanding” with the locals. There are lots of theories about the nature of this “cultural misunderstanding” but the one that makes the most sense to me is that the Dutch boys got a little too friendly with some of the native women, and the native men exacted a harsh punishment.

Such has been the downfall of many.

In 1638 the Swedes settled in what is now Wilmington and that community flourished to a much greater extent than did Zwanendael.

For the next 40 years or so there was back and forth bickering among the Dutch and the Swedes and Lord Baltimore over in Maryland but that was pretty much settled when William Penn arrived in 1682 and renamed the place Lewes, declaring it to be the seat of the new Sussex County, one of Pennsylvania’s three “lower counties of the Delaware.”

The three counties gradually but steadily grew away from Pennsylvania and into self-governance, eventually becoming a separate colony just a month before the revolution.

This story is told in the Zwaanendael Museum (pictured below) which was built in 1931, the 300^th anniversary of the founding of the settlement by the horny whalers. The building is modeled after the town hall in Hoorn, the Netherlands.

The Presbyterian Church is just down the street from the museum and I’ve posted a photo of the church (below) to show what I have described in earlier posts as the propensity for churches in Delaware to be surrounded by cemeteries.

The next photo (below) is the Episcopal Church in “downtown Lewes”. This building was built in 1854 but it is the third church building on the site as it evolved from the Church of England into Trinity Episcopal Church.

In addition to (of course) a cemetery, the grounds of the church include a meditative labyrinth and you can see in the photo below that I am "getting my zen on" as I prepare to enter the labyrinth.

In the 19^th century the construction of the two breakwaters and the two lighthouses (that I have described in previous posts) helped Lewes become an important harbor for fishing vessels and for the pilots that, to this day, travel out from here to board ships near the mouth of the bay to guide them through the tricky waters as the bay narrows to a river in Wilmington and, eventually, Philadelphia. The photo below is the "lightship" Overfalls, literally a portable lighthouse. Lightships were used in the 19th and early 20th century. Built in 1938, the Overfalls is one of the last lightships constructed in the U.S.

Obviously, the folks here in Lewes are quite proud of their lighthouse/ship history.

In the 20^th century it is important to note that, as Rehoboth Beach and Cape May were developing as tourist spots, Lewes was primarily a working-class town centered on fishing for a type of fish known as Menhaden. Menhaden were netted in great quantities and processed for their oil. By the mid-20th century most of the people that lived in Lewes were linked in some way to the Menhaden fishing industry.

A major transition took place in the mid-1960s when the Menhaden declined sharply. Fortuitously, both the Cape May ferry and the state park opened in 1964 and a branch of the University of Delaware that is devoted to marine sciences opened in 1970. Now the town caters primarily to tourism and sport fishing, attracting well-to-do retirees and getting a nice boost from the university.

Although there was supposedly a 100 percent chance of rain today only a few sprinkles fell and we spent most of the afternoon walking around downtown, visiting the many historic sites. The threat of rain may have kept the workers away and it was a blissfully quiet morning.

Day 28: 402 years later; Henry Hudson returns?

I was jogging by the ferry landing, returning from Cape Henlopen State Park, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by a strange sight.

Moored over at the dock was one of those three-masted ships; you know, the kind where you expect to see Johnny Depp at the helm.

The first thought that came to my mind was that Henry Hudson, who sailed into this very harbor in 1609 in a vain quest to find the non-existent northwest passage, had somehow worked out a deal with the powers that be so that he could return to earth and resume his quest for the passage, now that global warming is on the verge of creating a real northwest passage.

Quickly, I came to my senses.

“That’s crazy,” I said to myself. “There’s no such thing as global warming. If there was, Congress would be doing something about it.”

Based on this reasoning alone, I completely dismissed the idea that Hudson had been reincarnated and sailed the ship into Delaware Bay and docked it here in Lewes. With that possibility discounted, I went over to the dock to further investigate the odd-looking ship.

It turned out to be a replica of the Kalmar Nyckel, the Swedish ship that came to Delaware in 1638 with the colonists that founded what is now Wilmington (and later built what is now called Old Swedes Church).

The first Kalmar Nyckel made four crossings of the Atlantic. Today, for $60 bucks, a person can sail out into Delaware Bay on the replica for two-and-half-hours.

Spotting the ship and returning later with Betsy for a closer look and some photos was pretty much the highlight of the day, along with hearing Mrs. Osprey squawk and move around some in the nest as I watched on Osprey Cam.