2020 was a tough year for many people due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How could anybody predict this?!
This pandemic has changed people's life styles.
COVID-19 changed our 2020 hiking trip plan, too. First, we planned to go to Montana in summer, because Mr.N's sister Ms.F1 would have a wedding there. We planned to hike there in addition to attending the party. Of course wedding during this COVID era is not a good idea. So it was cancelled. Cancel or not, anyway we were not comfortable with flying during COVID, so we didn't go anywhere in summer, and instead we hiked here and there in the local.
We hoped that we could travel somewhere soon after. Then summer passed, and fall came, but the pandemic continued. Actually it got worse and worse. In the past few years we went to the south globe in December, since it is summer time in the south globe when the north globe is winter. This year, we can't fly and anyway no country welcomes US residents! Furthermore, even US domestic flights are not safe (actually more dangerous than international flights, in my opinion).
So what did we do? ------We did a road trip within the United States!
Because we didn't take any vacations until thanksgiving, we were able to combine our vacation days with thanksgiving and Christmas break, AND new year break to be a long vacation. We did the 39 day's trip in the West!
A couple of days before trip, we went to grocery stores and bought food for camping, such as instant rice, cup noodles, pasta and pasta sauces, tuna packs, dried seaweeds, Japanese curry packs, ramen/soba/udon noodles, fish, cookies, chocolates, etc. Important tip here is getting Japanese snacks, ramen, pasta sauce, Japanese fish cans, dried seaweed and dried vegetable salad kits and Japanese cookies and chocolates! Those are the essential survival items for me as a REAL Japanese to go to middle of nowhere.
2020, November 26th is our trip day1. For this trip we decided to rent SUV instead of taking our sedan, because we had a lot of camping gear and food, we needed space for stuff and comfy atmosphere. Only "mmmmmmm" thing for the car was not a Japanese car, but it was AWD, so I couldn't complain. The number plate was Rhode Island, and we decided to pretend RI residents for six weeks.
Driving off Mass, I was thinking, "Oh is this really happening? Thanksgiving has just started and I won't work until January 4th!" I felt a little surreal. Well, it might be typical vacation style for Europeans (French)?! Definitely not for Japanese!
On the way we saw a couple of bad accidents. One was that a car was completely climbed up to a guardrail. Since it was an opposite lane, we were not affected. Another accident we saw was insane. A car was burning in the big fire ahead. The car was at the edge and the owner was standing 50 meters ahead and texting. How could he text not looking at his car when it was in the big fire?! We saw two police cars were coming to the burning car. Wow. It was like a movie.
During drive, we listened to radio or podcasts mostly. Our first choice radio station is local public radio. I like NPR news. Usually local public radio is FM somewhere between 85 to 95 (although Mr.N said tune is over 100 in Montana). There is a public radio station in the area of big cities but I found there is not in the rural areas. When we couldn't find a local public radio station, we listened to podcasts.
Our favorites are:
1. Car Talk
2. Hidden Brain
3. Invisibilia
4. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
5. Embedded
With radio and shows, we drove through Connecticut, New York, then Pennsylvania. Penn. Recently I heard Penn a lot during November election. Actually I got much better sense which state I was during this trip, because I listened to and watched Youtube videos for election results. That helped me to get a sense where I was within the U.S. by imaging a US map in my head. It is a great progress considering that I didn't know how many states in the U.S. when I came to the U.S.! (Who foreigners care?) Anyway here I want to say about Penn was that all the rest areas along highway were closed!!! We went to a fast food store and it was only drivethru! No restroom....then, WHERE TO PEE????? As a hiker, I don't care using "wilderness restroom", but I heard that it is illegal to pee in the civilized area.
Finally we found that a gas station had restroom.
Then after 7 hours of driving, we decided to stay at the campground in Antietam Battlefield & Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park (the longest park name ever) in Maryland. It is convenient these days: through recreation.gov App, you can quickly reserve a campsite. This was a very nice campsite along Antietam creek and upper Potomac river. There are more than 18 campsites, but only 2 of them were occupied that night. Other group was far away, so we had a peaceful night. Price is cheap, only $10/night, probably because you need to walk 0.1 mile to the campsite from car parking. It seems like most people hate the walk like that.
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| Campsite |
A picture of campsite in the morning is in the left.
There is a grill, a fire pit, a picnic table set for each site, but nobody is in the sight. This photo was taken after the fire was extinguished mostly, but you might be able to catch the small smoke from the pit. Fire warmed up me a lot in the winter camping and loved fire even more in the cold! (although Mr.N still said fire was not necessary).
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I don't know what kind of fruit or nut this is
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While I was doing final ground check
before leaving, I noticed that yellow ball on the ground. At first I
thought that it was a tennis ball. I thought, "Okay, a doggie left a
toy"
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More yellow balls
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Then I realized that there are a lot more yellow balls on the ground. I looked around more carefully on the ground and it seems like that birds or squirrel eat this stuff. I had never seen these things and it was interesting to see these.
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| After eaten up |
To be continued....
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