MAY 27-30, Outside Chambersburg, PA
Forgot it was Memorial Day weekend and so had trouble locating a camp site. Wound up yesterday at Twin Bridge campground outside of Chambersburg PA. Not the kind of place we favor (most of our fellow campers show up in 30 and 40-foot trailers and motor homes and as soon as they plug into the electric they turn on the AC and you never see them again) but we were grateful to have found a site, and it’s a nice place, has a lot to like. Great for kids—a fast flowing shallow stream that they play in and lots of little amusements for them. Nice to see kids outside all day whooping and hollering.
Had our first visitor last night, a guy from the area in his big trailer, a real character full of stories. “I was at Homestead air force base for two years and I tell you it’s nothing but sawgrass, snakes, hot rats and sweat. The army only let us have one shower a week but it didn’t matter as soon as you came out of the shower it was like you never went into one. They mashed down that sawgrass with a big-wheeled army truck and said ‘Set up your tent there’ and I thought I’m not sleeping on that with all those snakes and hot rats and whatever the hell is in there.” Guy’s name was Don and he and my cousin Debbie, both 65, remember taking baths in zinc tubs with water heated on a wood stove.
Brenda and I took a three+ mile walk this morning along the local roads while the mist was still coming off the land. Clear to see where the piedmont ends and the Appalachians begin to the west a couple miles away, mist rising from some unseen river.
Big dairy farms, two old graveyards, an unusual roadside flower later identified as Bladder Campion. Nice here now, 2:30, under the shade of the canopy attached to our trailer; very hot but a nice breeze. Old high school chum and his wife, who live nearby, are coming over. There is a gospel bluegrass concert here at the campground tonight—we’ll listen to a bit and then go out to dinner.
We have been eating well but simply—a vegetable curry last night, chili one night, fire-baked potatoes and local fresh spinach another. PB&J sandwiches, apples. Part of the purpose of this trip is to get away from our (my) preoccupation with food. At home I start thinking about dinner as soon as I finish lunch and the meals were getting more elaborate, exotic and calorie-laden. Now I am grateful for a crust of bread with a little butter.
Took a short drive to visit Franklin Furnace, a National Register site, at the very base of the Appachians. Saw a guy gardening inside the ruins of an old stone structure. We got out thinking this was the remains of the Franklin Furnace. It was instead an 18th century building built to store charcoal and supplies for the furnace which was nearby. But he told us that the furnace was on private property down the road a little bit and the owner didn’t appreciate people coming onto his property; he insinuated that the property owner really didn’t like people visiting the furnace and that he was about to bulldoze the whole site to avoid liability for people clambering around the furnace ruins. So a lesson learned—sites on the National Registry of Historic Places are not necessarily public spaces. We talked to the guy for a long while, a gentle friendly native of the area. He told us where to see a Timber Rattlesnake that had just been run over. Close as I want to get.