Where is Ohio
Driving far is not a problem in the United
States - as long as you have enough time. Finding a hotel is normally not a problem
either, they
are virtually at all interstate exits, and then there's the hotels in major cities
and many elsewhere as well.
Wilkesboro is not a major city. It has about 3,000 inhabitants and twin city North Wilkesboro has just over 4,000. The two cities lie on either
bank of the Yadkin River. Although the cities together have almost 7,500 inhabitants,
the two hotels in town, are still slightly below what we were used to, so we
were glad that we had booked a room from home, not least because we had perhaps never found
the hotel if we hadn't known that it was there. It should
however get worse already later this interesting Thursday when we had to look far
for a place to stay.
This should end up being the longest drive of the whole trip, meassured in both
distance in
time. We got up early (at 6.00), because we had to be at Wippoorwill Academy a
little before nine. This visit I have told about in the article
Three days in
Dooley country.
After the visit and tour to various Dooley sites, it was a little after 11 am, so it was
time to get north. Over the next two days our plan was to reach Jamaica near
JFK, where we had booked a hotel for the night between Friday and Saturday
before we had to fly home. We therefore agreed to take freeways as much
as possible; drive so
far we felt like, and then find a hotel. We returned to Wilkesboro NC and continued
east on U.S. 421 until we met I-77, which we
took north. We crossed the border to Virginia and continued northwest. When we met I-81 we took that northeast through the
Shenandoah Valley. Tim would like to see Robert E. Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's graves in Lexington, and I-81
passes close by. When
we got that far, we left the interstate and changed to U.S. 11 going over
Virginia's Natural Bridge.
Once in Lexington we found that there were no available
parking lots near Stonewall Jackson's tomb, so we agreed to get back to the
interstate and
just continue north. We then started to talk about where to leave I-81. Out plan
was to head east to I-95 and then north to New York City. We could take I-64 at Staunton and
meet I-95 in Richmond, Virginia as Dorte and I did in 2004, or
we could continue north to Strasburg and take I-66 to meet I-95 near Washington DC, as we did
with the kids in 2000. In the end, however, we did neither, as we agreed to waive I-95 altogether.
This would of course mean that we wouldn't come through Delaware, thus adding
another state to our list. But we agreed, that as we would only pass through the
state anyway, it didn't matter much. Instead we decided to stay on I-81 to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and then
turn east. This route would take us through a small corner of West Virginia and a
correspondingly small corner of Maryland.
The only stops we had made since
Wilkesboro, was for biological reasons, like lunch and such and to change the
driver, and we continued with just those kind of stops for the rest of the day. At Harrisburg we
turned east towards Allentown on the border
between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We decided that when we had passed the
border we would find a hotel. There was just no hotels when we got that far!
Normally there are signs at the interstate exits announcing gasoline, food and lodgings, but here
there were only signs for food and gasoline, no hotels. Our GPS had at this time
almost stopped working, so it was of little help. When we were
well into the New Jersey we decided that if we had not found any hotels when we
got to exit 19 (19 miles from the border), we would turn around and drive back
to Pennsylvania where we had seen several. As it happened, Tim, who was navigator at this time, made
another attempt with GPS and got it working for a short while and this time it
knew a hotel a little
farther to the south and roughly in the right direction. On the other hand
the GPS led us away from the interstate and along tiny roads, not out in the wilderness of New
Jersey, for such does not exist - at least not here, but through small settlements
and industrial areas, where one town turns into the next. We were in the
gigantic megalopolis that extends at least from
Washington DC and up to Boston on the eastern seabord of USA. We eventually found
the hotel however, and not far from there we passed a TGI Friday restaurant where we
could have dinner later.
It turned out that the motel had only one room vacant and it was a
smoking room. On the other hand, it was on the ground floor with parking right
outside the door, and as we had no energy to go on, we chose to stay there.
It turned out that the smell was not that bad. We dragged everything from the car
trunk, icebox, bags, waste and so on, since it was our plan to pack all our stuff when we had eaten, so everything was ready for the return
of the car Saturday.
When
we had carried everything inside, it was around 9.15 pm and we had gotten quite
hungry, so we drove to the TGI Friday we had seen. When we got there, we asked the waitress where we were (we did not actually
know what the town was called), and she could tell that we were in Bridgewater,
New Jersey. When she told it, I looked at her and asked with some panic in my voice:
"Are you sure that it is New Jersey? Are we not in Ohio?" That made her
look rather strange at me,
and it didn't get any better when I looked at Tim and said (in English): "So
we should have turned left at that traffic light after all". At this time, I think it
dawned on her that it was a joke, because when we both laughed, she smiled a
little cautious. After dinner we drove back to the hotel, where we decided to
postpone repackaging to the next morning, as it was actually almost 11 pm.
I later learned that Bridgewater was the place where
the first American flag was
hoisted on June 14th 1777. Therefore the town celebrates the flag every year on 4th July, when the city's flag
is replaced and Declaration of Independence is read. A flag with 13 stars (the number
that was originally in the flag) is always flying above Washington Campground, located
where the first US flag was ever hoisted.
The sun had been shining in the morning, when we were in Dooley country and it
stayed like that as we drove through Shenandoah Valley. When we reached Pennsylvania
there were a some clouds and we got a few raindrops, but not many. The
temperature was about 88 degrees when we visited Mrs. Carter, but increased
over the day to 98, before going down again as we got further north. When we reached Bridgewater
by around 9 pm it was as low as 73. The locals were probably happy about that,
as in the weeks before
they had had heat wave on the East Coast with up to 106 degrees in Washington DC
and 109 in some places in New York. We heard in TV that 46 people, of which
some had been children under 12 years old, had died as a result of the heatwave.
Despite the fact that we didn't leave Wilkesboro until around noon, we managed a
good distance today. There is something about Elkville and getting out of there; Dorte and I
didn't leave until 2 pm in 2004, although we had planned to leave several
hours earlier but we were only going to Charlottesville, Virginia. Actually Tim
and I set two records on this day. We managed to visit six states,
although some of them were only pass through. The earlier record was 4. We drove
605 miles; also a new record as the previous was 542 miles.
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