6:05 reveille, 58 degrees, looks like another beautiful day. This make 9 in a row. In DC, our record is 2 days in a row, and that's when Congress is not in session.
9:50..ready to move on. To save time, my routine from here on is to shower on way out of camp and to do laundry on way in. Routine is critical on these trips to save time.
10:45. Stopped for coffee and a store on the way to he highway, the only store on that 30 mile drive. As I removed my Beet headphones from their perch on my rear view mirror, the mirror broke off. No big deal. I just pulled out my rear view mirror repair kit and was on the road again in 15 minutes. I learned my lesson in Labrador in 2002 when Leben and Erde broke off the mirror three times. To avoid this, I lowered their bed in what used to be my passenger seat so their heads would not hit the mirror and bring along several repair kits. Driving 15,000 without a rear view mirror is not a smart idea. In the past, until I could repair it, I held the mirror with my hand. Not a good idea.
11:15 Discovered that the charger for my LG cell phone keeps falling out and I cannot get my cell phone to recharger. No big deal. I take with me five different recharging cables and one worked well with the cell phone. I can actually recharge six things at the same time using the two cigarette lighters in the Defender. I had an extra one installed in the console.
1:30 Time for our three-hour rest stop. I always seem to stop at exactly the same spots I stopped in on my earlier trips this way. Must have had the same rules. This time it was the Eastern Time Zone line. No water for he dogs to jump into to. In 2000, on the trip home with Sonntag, I chatted with some guy here for about 30 minutes. After a while, I asked him why his female passenger sitting in his car did not come out of the car. He told me he feels lonely on these trips so he brings along a mannequin to talk with, or to. I can't blame the guy because I am no saner talking with the dogs.
Saw 4 hitchhikers along the route today, two with dogs lying beside them on the road shoulder in the heat with no water bowls in sight. Why do people do that? I suspect they have the dogs to get a ride faster. On December 31, 1989, late at night, as I was driving back from Canada with Sonntag, my Jeep broke own 5 miles north of Lennox, Pennsylvania. The road was virtually empty of vehicles. This was before God created cell phones, so I started hiking the five miles to Lenox to call my motor club. I started to hitch a ride as soon as the first car came along, and as good luck would have it, the guy stopped and gave us both a lift to Lennox. I would have done the same for those two guys with dogs but there is not room in the Defender for an extra apple, let alone a man and his dog, or two of both.
5:05 Arrived at Aaron Provincial Park where Sonntag and thanks to the most pleasant and equally pretty hostess, Michaela, I was able to get the absolutely great camp site I stayed in here in 2000 with Sonntag. As good luck would have it, the nearby town was having its annual summer fair and so the camp was empty and got my favorite site (#35), a tree-shaded spot on the top of a hill on a small peninsula overlooking the lake. Not a good site to have during an electrical storm, though, but none was threatening.
Finished all the camp chores in record time and had time for Leben and Erde to take a swim in the lake and give Leben a shower for his skin allergy, which still seems to affect him. As for Erde's tumor, I noticed that it is starting to grow back, which I expected. I know what I have to do when I get home.
The nature of the trip changes dramatically from here. The next 1500 miles will be across the hot, flat, open Canadian plains, the worst part if the trip. I remember at one rest stop in 2001 with four-month old Leben and Erde, they took refuge under the Defender for shade. I hope to do 400 miles a day to get it over quickly, and will stay at camps not too far from the highway, even some KOAs. One problem is that this stretch of the country has been plagued recently wit torrential rains, so who knows what I can expect? After that, we hit the Canadian Rockies and snow. Once we hit the Yukon and Alaska, who knows what we will have as I have never been there this late in the season?. The good part about that is that all the mosquitoes and RVs will be gone.
8:30. I was able to complete everything and retreat to my tent without using any flashlights. One of the joys of the road is to be able to do that. The dogs, of course, would not understand that.
Ed Mulrenin
202-747-4704 (mobile)
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