Day 6 - Tues 9/15
We were breaking camp and heading back to Willow Bay and had agreed to get on the water “butts in boats (BIB)” by 8:30, even though we knew that would mean an early and chilly start after a cold night. Knowing that it takes time to break camp and pack up, I woke up a little before 6 AM and well before sunrise started packing things in my tent by lantern light: sleeping bag, camping cot, etc. Once I heard Rob moving around I got out of my tent to find it was quite crisp - maybe not the mid-30’s the forecast had called for, but cold enough that I had to keep pausing to warm my hands up while I worked.
I packed and ate breakfast at the same time, taking a break from shoving stuff into dry bags every once in a while to grab handfuls of granola and dried blueberries and sip coffee. Time was growing short to hit the 8:30 deadline and so I loaded everything into the kayak in a rushed, somewhat haphazard fashion. Even though I had used up four days worth of food, hurriedly crammed in as it was my stuff took up just as much space as before - but lo and behold, I was the first one packed and ready to go which never happens! There's a pretty established packing pecking order in terms of who gets their kayaks packed first, and if I had to place a bet, if there was a Kentucky Derby of kayak packing, my trifecta bet would be Tom, Jen and Suzanne, but in this case for once I was the one able to luxuriate on the beach whilst throwing impatient shade at everyone else while they fussed their gear into their boats. We wound up launching about 30 minutes later than planned, and it was a very satisfied thirty minutes for me.
Our takeout at Willow Bay was less than a mile from the NY/PA border and so just for spite (remember, the whole impetus for this destination was NY’s COVID-related travel ban, which put the kibosh on our Adirondack plans) we intentionally overshot Willow Bay paddled just across the border into New York before turning around and heading for the marina. Take that, NY swine! We entered your state anyway!
Someone at Willow Bay had a bad night
After unpacking the boats and loading the cars we each went our own ways with our own plans, knowing we’d meet up again later at Black Moshannon park, our next campsite. Suzanne went to check out Kinzua Bridge park. After being disappointed when it turned out the marina restaurant was closed some of the group still had unsatisfied burger cravings - Rob went back into Bradford and got a burger at Kabobs at the Option. I was more focused on cleanliness than on burgers and so had the idea of grabbing a shower at the Willow Bay campground before hitting the road. Bela liked that idea and decided to do the same and when I got to the bath house he was already there, whistling his way through a glorious hot shower. He called out to me from the shower stall that the shower ran for two minutes before shutting off - enough time to soap up on the first push of the water button, and rinse off in the second. I rolled my eyes a little at having someone mansplain to me how to take a shower - but getting clean felt so good that I couldn’t be upset about it. I showered, shaved, my gear around in my car then headed on my way.
As I already mentioned, I was not one of the ones with a burger craving and what food cravings I did have were going to be satisfied by my dinner plans (more on this in a bit) and so for lunch I was perfectly satisfied with a sandwich from Sheetz. When I pulled in I first gassed up the car, which gave me an opportunity to scope out the mask-wearing compliance of the customers (remember, we were deep in Trump country). Only once I had satisfied myself that it was safe enough did I go in and order a grilled chicken sandwich (which was surprisingly good!). Sheetz has outdoor tables but they were closed off due to COVID, so I ate in the car in the parking lot. V called while I was there, which was good timing, since it meant I could talk to her without cell phone dropouts and I could really focus on the call. So good to hear from her! How did she know the perfect time to call me?
As to food cravings, those who know me know that I am a lover of pizza above all else. While others were craving burgers, my camping fantasy was more like drone delivery to the campsite of a couple of New York style pizza slices. In fact, my pizza scheming had started at the very outset of the trip. During the drive to Bradford it had occurred to me that, as we were going to be rolling into Black Moshannon State Park in the late afternoon, it could make sense to pick up dinner in town on the way in rather than having to worry about cooking dinner dinner on top of making camp. On the way to the reservoir at the beginning of the trip I kept my eyes open as I drove through Philipsburg (the closest town to Black Moshannon) and spotted Sarina’s, an Italian restaurant/pizza place just up the road from the town’s supermarket, another resupply destination. When I passed back through the town I first made a quick stop at the supermarket (poor mask compliance! I was outta there as quickly as possible!) then ordered myself a veggie pizza at Sarina’s. I was encouraged by the counter guy’s Italian accent. Western PA has a big Italian population, and despite being in a small town I figured had a good shot at an at least passable pie.
I got to enjoy the delicious smell of my fresh pizza on the drive to the campground, but I didn’t get to taste it right away. First came setting up camp, including a Really Big Deal about who was in which campsite. We had enough campsites for everyone - in fact, we had basically reserved a whole cul-de-sac and so had almost our own little village - but when Rob arrived he pulled into a campsite without thinking about the fact that it wasn’t the one Suzanne had assigned to him, which had a cascading effect: since Rob was in my assigned campsite, I pulled into the one across the way, which had been assigned to Tom, and so on. It really didn't matter, as all of the campsites were identical and as I said, we had privacy in our little cul-de-sac, and eventually everyone got on board with the fact that it was OK to deviate from the arbitrary site assignments Suzanne had made before the trip.
After we all got our campsites set up we segued into happy hour. By the time I got to eating my pizza it was three hours old and no longer hot, but still, eating under cover of darkness I reveled in my sybaritic, very non-campingy indulgence while I imagined the others in the group slurping spartan camping food - gooey Mountain House meals or perhaps an assortment of jerkies. And yes, Sarina’s pizza turned out to be pretty good. I was glad I had ordered the medium rather than the personal size and I stowed the leftover slices in my cooler for the next day.
When I had spoken with Valerie at my Sheetz stop I had reassured her that connectivity would be much better during the car camping part of the trip and that we’d be able to talk every day. Wouldn’t you know it, though, the campground was a cellular dead zone and so after dinner (have I mentioned that it was pizza? It was pizza!) I drove out of the campground in search of phone service. I finally found signal about five miles back towards Philipsburg where I pulled off onto a side road to have a place to sit and talk. A very dark, pitch black, creepy place to talk. But I did get through to Valerie, and no crazed axe murder materialized out of the dark, so - mission accomplished!
Day 7 - Weds, 9/16
Oh, the luxuries of car camping! For the car camping portion of our trip I slept in my nice big tent and added a mattress pad on top of my cot, which made it feel like the most comfortable bed on earth. I slept well. And we had running water, and a sink to wash dishes, and real bathrooms and showers (for those who dared to venture into them).
We started the morning slowly, but at some point decided we had lazed around enough and made a plan to hit the road and go paddling. We all decided on a time to leave, and as I was finishing getting ready - maybe two minutes before our agreed upon departure time, I looked up to see everyone else rolling out of the campground in a convoy. That left me pretty pissed off - that the group would leave without me. I briefly considered just packing up and heading home right then and there. I had been having enough trouble trying to manage the stress I was absorbing during my calls home and from the group’s Really Big Deals and the temptation was there to just bag it. But I got control over my disappointment and, noting that I was exactly on time as I pulled out of my campsite, found Suzanne stopped at the campground dumpster. Suzanne told me that Jen had waited there too but was now off somewhere trying to find me, and only Rob, Tom and Bela had bolted to the launch. Jen, Suzanne and I regrouped and headed out, Jen (whose phone battery was dead) following the two of us who had GPS.
We had expected Bald Eagle State Park to be the filler of our trip - a small and possibly very busy recreational lake that we chose just to have someplace to paddle to fill out the the week, but we were pleasantly surprised to be wrong. It turned out to be a gorgeous lake, and not very crowded at all (we suspect that it’s very different during the summer - as evidenced by the fact that the park’s web site instructs boaters to circle the lake counterclockwise. If they have to control direction like it’s an ice skating rink, then that means there are a lot of boats out there!).
We had a very nice outing. It was another cool morning and so we started once again with pretty, wispy fog over the lake with the day transforming into warm and sunny weather as we got into afternoon. We covered about nine miles and took a nice lunch break at one of the other boat launches (home to a bathroom so foul that I just peed out back rather than going inside). We had thought Bald Eagle offered only a day’s worth of kayaking, but we covered less than half of it, so we decided to return the next day, superseding our previous - and somewhat tenuous - idea of kayaking the Susquehanna River.
I’ve mentioned that we were deep in Trump country and I stopped at an intersection on the way back to take a picture of a particularly garish pro-Trump display, involving an old pickup truck painted red, white and blue and a likeness of the man himself on the window that made it look as if he was sitting in the passenger seat. While I was there a woman pulled up at the stop sign and said out the window of her car, “I can’t believe you’re taking a picture of that monster” - a brave thing to say deep in Trump territory. She was thrilled to discover that I was taking the picture not out of admiration but to show the folks back home in my Blue bubble the level of enthusiasm there is for the man out in western PA.
Back at camp I slipped my leftover pizza out of the cooler and let it warm up a little bit while we gathered for happy hour. I didn’t try to actually heat the up because that would have been tough to do over my little stove and besides, cold pizza is a perfectly fine meal - certainly better than the dehydrated science experiments I brought with me to the first part of our trip. We had a nice campfire. I had spoken with Valerie while I was driving back from Bald Eagle lake and so I, feeling a little tipsy, decided not to venture out on the dark country roads in search of cell service.
Day 8 - Thurs 9/17
Having the campground amenities of a bath house was a mixed bag. Sure, we all loved the idea of a shower and running water, but each trip into the bathroom was a roll of the dice (a “crapshoot”, if you prefer). You never knew what maskless Pennsylvania hillbilly might stroll in while you were in there and COVID up the place. Wednesday night I was heading for the bathroom to get washed up when I saw examples of said maskless hillbillies enter the bathhouse. Instead of going inside I went around the building looking for a campground map - something showing where there might be another bathhouse. Instead, I discovered something better - a single user handicapped bathroom in the back of the building. Yup, go in there, lock the door and you have your own toilet, sink and shower, and zero chance of being joined by COVID-spewing hillbillies. Having a semi-private bathroom joined pizza on my list of secret pleasures at Black Moshannon State Park.
While I am tempted to describe Thursday’s activities as “stuff I had to get over with before I could go back and take a shower in my private bathroom”, in fact they were much more. We returned to Bald Eagle State Park (about a 40 minute drive), passing along the way signs for fresh eggs and milk along with once again viewing the garish Trump pickup truck display. We launched from a different point on the lake and explored the part we had missed the previous day, including exploring up Bullitt Run, which is a (the?) source of water for the lake. The water in the run was clear cool and like many such streams, the place teemed with wildlife. Herons, eagles, mergansers, woodpeckers, and even a swimming squirrel (I hadn’t known that squirrels could swim!). Oh, and of course each day we saw at least one bald angle - I mean, the park had to live up to its name, didn’t it? Again, this was our second day of kayaking at what we thought was going to be a lackluster one day lake - and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable outings of the whole trip, offering exploration up the stream, wildlife, poking around a marina, and scenic open lake paddling. We ended on a high note, for sure.
When we got back to our put-in we ran across a group we thought we had spotted the prior day - a group a grey-haired ladies who were unloading a bunch of short (rec) kayaks from a rented cargo van. At first I thought it was an outfitter dropping people off, but chatted with them (well, I didn’t, since chatting is not one of my strong suits - but others did) and it turns out they’re like us from a parallel universe. They’re a group of friends who do a trip every year the same week we do ours (this is their twelfth year). It’s fun to discover other people out there doing the same crazy stuff we do.
Then it was another simple dinner. Alas, I was out of pizza so I made some nice low sodium minestrone, which I enhanced with TVP and mushrooms. I once again drove out to call Valerie and while I was out picked up some wood for a final campfire.
Friday we all just woke up and broke camp. I knew I wouldn’t be the first one out (that’s always Tall Tom) but I was working hard to pack quickly and so I was surprised when Rob was packed up and ready to go before I was - another trifecta bet I wouldn't have hit. As people left we all said goodbye and before I got on the road I went around and said my final goodbyes to Suzanne, Jen and Bela then headed home, stopping at the Wegman’s in Gaithersburg to pick up a challah and honey cake for Rose Hashonah, which was imminently about to begin at sundown on Friday. I got the car unpacked and myself cleaned up just in time to ... not go to religious services, since they had been cancelled because of COVID. But we did watch the online content the synagogue had put together, which was very nice. So I had a very nice end to the year 5780 rolling into a nice start for 5781.
2 comments:
I received a reservation made by Suzanne in my name for a particular campsite. Via the registration process, every campsite had a name attached to it, and every person was associated with a campsite. I may be missing the subtlety between those facts and assigning campsites.
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