De La Warr

The Smith cousins

The next few weeks were spent visiting family in South Carolina and then Virginia.  We had a good ole time enjoying all the nieces and nephews and their children. Lots of hugging and eating all around! Jack even had a chance to reconnect with some of his cousins.  The three of them have not been together in one place in over 30 years!  They haven’t changed a bit ;)  It was funny to notice that they all had beards.

Lake Fairfax

 Lake Fairfax Park is located just outside of DC.  It was close to my nephew’s home and worth mentioning.  Electric and water only but it was a pretty and unexpected oasis in the midst of the very congested urban sprawl of Washington DC.  It would make good base if you are planning on visiting the DC area in a RV.  We opted out of venturing into the capital proper this time as the focus was on visiting family.  I do have older posts on both areas.

It was time to move on and go on diet!  We headed to one of those states not conveniently located on the Eastern seaboard.   Tucked away just east of the DC craziness and the other side of Maryland is Delaware.  Sigh.  Glad to be out of the traffic and off the 495 beltway that circles DC.  We crossed over on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (not to be confused with Chesapeake Tunnel Bridge).  Hmm,  Chesapeake , now  that’s a name I think I learned something about a long time ago in school.   Way back there was a Lord De La Warr,  he crossed  the Big Pond to help out the Jamestown Colony in the early days of our country's history.  He later became the first governor of the Virginia colony and eventually had the state of Delaware named after him.  Turns out Jack’s nephew John David has been researching the family tree and that same person is Jack’s great grandfather 11 times removed. Who knew!

Cypress Trees at Trap Pond

Delaware check. Delaware is a small state and one of three states Jack and I have not visited. We can check this one off.   Now we just have to get to Rhode Island and North Dakota and we will have seen all 50 states together.  Delaware was a pleasant mix of rural farm lands, coastal tourist towns, small towns and some genuinely friendly folks.  We stayed in the older Trap Pond State Park, noted for having one of the northernmost stands of natural growing Cypress trees in the US.   It is a pretty park with some really big old trees which makes some of the sites (water and electric only)  difficult to navigate.     Unfortunately, it also has deer ticks so do wear bug repellent if walking any of the trails and check for ticks afterwards.  We found some of those nasty Lyme disease carrying suckers on Jack.  Yuck!  A quick note about the park, it fills up on the weekends with local families and gets quite busy.  However, during the week it was almost empty and very pleasant.

Delaware Coast

We were thinking at one point on this trip of visiting some of the bigger cities on the Eastern Seaboard.  Philadelphia and New York are just north of Delaware.  We decided not to deal with the problems a big city presents for a RV and opted to go to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania and start heading away from the coast.  I can  already smell the bread baking.