Me at our lumpy campsite
Sharpsburg and Harper's Ferry Tour
October had come, my husband's vacations were cancelled, and so was the long planned and anticipated Natchez Trace Tour (450 miles). Sigh..Katrina messed everything up: our lives, our plans, our homes, our emotions. Well Katrina do what cha' want we'll make new plans, rebuild our homes, and get back our lives! Byron was determined that if he couldn't give me a long tour, I would at least have an overnight tour. So he made plans to fly to Maryland for a few days.
We were not prepared for an overnight tour. We didn't have our sleeping bags or our thermarest pads. Undaunted, we purchased the cheapest coleman sleeping bags that were on sale and reasoned we could give them to our children afterwards. Another problem was that Byron didn't have his bike. No matter, he could ride my Cannondale F400 mountain bike. Byron had fitted it with a blackburn rear rack so I could carry things on short rides.
Several things we learned from this. It is important to have a very sturdy rack. We didn't pack very much weight on the rear rack on my mountain bike at all and yet it still broke at the welds. Plastic ties come in handy. We repaired Byron's rack with them and it held. Mountain bikes are not as good at carrying weight as touring bikes designed for this purpose. Also, my feminine bike wasn't the right size or design for my husband. He is such a trooper though, he didn't complain.
We decided on the Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry tour, and we set off. Not to keep complaining, but again it wasn't easy to find the tour starting point. Finding overnight parking was just as difficult. After asking the ranger at the Antietam Civil War Cemetary if it would be O.K., we parked in the cemetary parking lot.
The Antietam Battlefield and Cemetary is in Sharpsburg. The tour started at the battlefield. It was mostly rolling fields with crops, grass and monuments. The battlefields have such a prevelent somber air, it is almost as if those who died there can still whisper through the breeze. If you stand still long enough I think you can hear or at least imagine them.
The weather was pleasant and we cheerfully rolled along. The book said that we would have to cross the Burnside Bridge to New Burnside Bridge road. Upon reaching the bridge, it was blocked with construction barriers. It looked sound enough, and Byron wanted to ignore the barriers and cross anyway. Being the little inhibited soul that I am, I wanted to at least climb the hill and see if there was another way. There wasn't. We turned around and headed back towards the bridge. There were some men standing by and on the bridge and as we drew closer we could tell that they were park maintenance employees. Byron arrived first and when I rolled up I could tell the exchange wasn't going very well. "Huuh, huu, huu," I heard the blond headed man chuckle, "Iffin' you can carry that bike on yer back 'n swim across, I reckon you can get accross, caus' you can't cross that bridge. huu, huu, huu." Real funny. "Whayll'" another employee interjected, "the boss done said we can't let no one cross, no one. We just put a new real 'spensive surface on that bridge yesterd'y an we can't let no one cross." Mind you they are walking on the small foot bridge with a leaf blower.
I could feel myself getting very angry and I think my husband could tell too, because he kept motioning for me to come on. "Well, how can we get to the New Burnside Bridge Road?" I asked. "Whall, You'll have to go back into town and..." The blond headed man gave me directions that would have taken us way off of our route. "Butt head" I murmered under my breath. Byron said, "Come on Kristi." With my face red and my heartbeat way faster than it should have been, I followed after Byron. "He's just being a jerk!" I said. Byron agreed, but explained that nothing we said or did was going to change that. The other men looked nice, I think they were just to cowardly to stand up the the bully blond headed man. Fuming we rode back the way we came. Not far I noticed that we had already crossed a bridge once. "Byron", I pointed out, "I think that's the road we want down that embankment." We scrambled down the embankment and took the unknown road. "I think this is it." I said.
Finally we saw a street marker and it was indeed the New Burnside Bridge road. As we rode along I kept hoping we would see those men so I could stick my tounge out at them. The jerk could have told us how close we were to the road and how we could get to it, but I doubt that he ever moved his behind from a truck seat to find out anything besides vehicle routes.
Byron admonished me not to dwell on that and enjoy the ride. So I did. The hills were roller coaster. I could tell that all my previous riding had paid off. I was taking on the hills with much more efficiency. My husband was not having as easy a time. To be fair he was riding a tiny girl mountain bike with wide tires. The ride from that point on was very pleasent. The scenery was georgeous. Country land with farms rolling hills and crops. We made it to the C & O Trail and took that route to Harper's Ferry. Harpers Ferry was where John Brown seized a national arsenal and planned to distribute the weapons to slaves. This rebellion was squashed by General Robert E. Lee. It was one of the sparks that started the civil war.
To get to Harper's Ferry from the trail, you have to carry your bike up several steep flights of stairs and cross a foot bridge that runs adjacent to a railroad bridge. It is ear deafing when a train crosses. We wandered around Harpers Ferry for a while, bought some water and returned to the trail.
Retracing our path we headed toward a camp site. A nice little strech of grass on the side of the Potomac River. There was about 50 young boys (about 12 to 15 years old) camping further down on an expedition with their school. Very polite and typical. You could hear their ruckus, but their leaders must have been pretty good, because it grew quite at a decent hour. There was one other lone tent camper two sites down and an R.V. pulled up later into the adjacent site.
There were trees with these large ball things hanging from them. Occasionally one would fall. When they hit the ground there was a terrible thud. I decided to put my helment on. There was no way I wanted one of those to hit me on the head! Byron laughed at me. He wouldn't have laughed if one had of hit him.
Starting a fire in Louisiana and starting a fire in Maryland are two very different things. I wanted a campfire. So I carefully built a mound of leaves and small twigs. Then I added larger branches and some cut peices of wood a previous camper had left. When I touched the match to the carefully arranged pile, "WHOOOOMPF!". It ignited in a flash, startling me so much I jumped back. Everything is wet in Louisiana, so starting a fire is a very long process. I can understand better now how forest fires are started.
Me at our lumpy campsite
After a filling dinner of MRE's, we climbed into our tent with our cheap sleeping bags and no thermarest pads. We had a lumpy night. Byron investigated a strange noise. It was a little fox jumping through the brush. We also had two spiders in our tent. After determining they weren't poisionous, I let them stay.
We woke up at dawn the next morning, had an MRE, loaded up our stuff and hit the trail. As we passed the lone camper, we said a good morning. He replied, "Where ya at?" Byron and I nearly fell off our bikes! "He has got to be from New Orleans", we said at the same time. "Where ya at!" is a typical New Orleans greeting.
After making the loop, we arrived back at our faithful truck to find a warning notice. It is against the law to park overnight in that parking lot, do not do it again. Sigh...We had a blast!