We were aching for a shower. The C&O campsites are convenient, but none have showers. We were also trying to get miles in. We had reserved rooms at the Marriot to meet our Parents in Wilmington Delaware the next night.

We pushed hard overland in Maryland. Our last mountains, South and Catoctin, awaited us. The pass over South mountain is historic from both the Revolutioniary and Civil Wars. We stopped for a little while to glean the history. We also looked for the Appalachian Trail. I would have liked to see the trail. Today marked the intersection of our journey and the momentous journeys of many other travellers.

In Middleton we had moosetracks ice cream at an old old ice cream shop. When we discovered moosetracks in Montana we judged it the best ice cream flavor in the world. Today's cones brought back memories from all the way back to the store west of Custer Battlefield. We had had it last there with our buffalo steaks.

At the top of the last mountain we could practically see the ocean. We had only flats now. I was more eager than ever to see the Atlantic. I had grown up only a day's drive from the Atlantic Ocean. Oddly enough I had never seen it. Stranger still, I had seen the Pacific several times. This was going to be good.

At the end of the day we couldn't find anyplace to camp. We couldn't find any hotels either. We really wanted showers. We ended up riding four miles out of the way to find a closed motel. The one occupant had been living there for years. He didn't know where to find the owner. To make it even stranger, he told me about the motel caretaker. The caretaker had committed suicide in the motel about two months before. I didn't tell Patti about this as we tented on the motel lawn.

We called our folks and changed our reservations. We had been planning on meeting them the next night at a Marriot in Wilmington Delaware. We were making good time, but not that good. We gave ourselves one more night on the road.