From 2012 to 2014, I lived in Maryland – Mount Washington (north of Baltimore), Columbia, and Laurel. I moved there after living in Minnesota for over 30 years, and it really became like a second home to me – new friends, new experiences, and a lot of new places to explore. Whenever I get back there, I’m flooded with great memories and time with friends.
After our stay in Bangor, we left a little earlier than we had planned and camped outside of Gardenir, ME, at another really great Boondockers Welcome location. It was a short drive, and we left after work, dumped our tanks, and headed south. There was a beautiful sunset over the banks of the Kennebec River, which I wish I could photographed – reds, oranges, pinks, and yellows mixed in with the blue sky and sparse clouds.
On Saturday, we were up early, Arthur was drugged (the only way to travel it seems), and we were driving to our stay in Connecticut – our 24th state. It’s a miracle that this doesn’t happen more often, but we got lost on the backroads of CT. 🍫 I think I misread the address, and after a long day of driving through rain and Boston traffic, I was all turned around. Luckily, our hosts were great and delayed the start of their camping trip to help us get settled in. Located outside of Ashford, I felt comforted by all the beautiful trees and our peaceful surroundings. It was a reminder that, even though we’ve been all over the country, there are probably locations that I would love to live that we didn’t visit or spend a lot of time in.
Arthur enjoyed the views, too. This is his “please stop driving” face. 🍫🍫
The next day, we were on the road early again – our final leg of the drive to MD. We really only encountered traffic around New York City. And I cannot explain the relief I felt as we drove down a familiar stretch of I-95, approaching Baltimore, and as we headed into to suburban Columbia. Driving around the country and not really knowing where you’re going wears on a person, so when the roads are familiar, the relief is real.
My friend and her foster pup, Shaq Attack, were my hosts while we were in MD. She had a great driveway where we parked. In CT, we discovered that Estella is not a fan of GCFI outlets. This didn’t seem like a big deal until it was. 🍫🍫🍫🍫 More on this later.
Action shot of Shaq Attack, playing with one of the toys I got him while I was visiting.
Part of the reason we stopped in MD was because I had a work trip, and I needed a place to park that was Arthur-friendly. During that trip, the cat sitter from Rover messaged me and said that there was a loud beeping noise, and she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. There wasn’t really anything I could do from TX, and my friend said she couldn’t hear it, so it had to wait until I got back.
Work hard. Play hard. Sweat a lot. At our staff meeting, we ventured out on a scavenger hunt (my hunting team) in the San Antonio afternoon heat (it felt like 100) and then had an 80s dance party. I hand-beaded that shirt and wore jelly shoes (neon is back!) and had a lot of fun dancing and doing karaoke and eating queso and tacos.
Back to reality in Maryland after the meeting, I came back to Estella’s house batteries completely dead. Turns out, when you don’t plug in the RV for over a week, and run the lights, the batteries die. I tried starting the engine to recharge the batteries; that didn’t help. What I didn’t remember until later was that I need the house batteries to pull the slide-out in. You may be thinking- why didn’t you just get a battery charger and trickle-charge the house batteries. I did think of that, but when I crawled under the van, the batteries were tucked up behind the rear tires, and the terminals were not visible…. I made a lot of phone calls, but I ended up solving my own problem by rigging a cord to a non-GCFI outlet in my friend’s house.
Before I go, some other highlights from my stop in Maryland.
I went to see Richard Osman speak at Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg about his writing process and his new book, We Solve Murders. I grabbed lunch with a friend at Ever Grain, had lunch with another friend at Gettysburger, went to get some blood work done, went shopping, and spent some lovely evenings out in Columbia with friends, and solved the NYT Letter Boxed in two words. After the beeping while I was gone, Arthur had a great time in MD.
And one last picture of me, eating two pieces of cake, instead of dinner, with my co-worker. The strawberry cake was better.
The Adventures of Ms Haps & Arthur 