With COVID-19 in the country, all spring travel and camping plans were on hold until this week when we decided to take “Serenity” out for a short overnight trip to New Germany State Park in Western Maryland. The park itself borders Savager River where we camped in March making planning and logistics pretty straight forward.
New Germany State Park also is the place where friends introduced me to cross country skiing and I assume some of my skin and blood cells have richly fertilized the soil. I am one with nature.
Taking Serenity for a 1 day-trip requires about the same prep as taking her for 10 days (sort of), tanks still need to be flushed/ filled, the “emergency” crate checked out, battery / fridge powered but of course we need less food and fewer clothes etc. Its a good prep run for longer trips.
Drive was uneventful, its a little scary that we aim for the same McDonalds has 1/2 way stop as before but familiarity has advantages. I am still apprehensive of driving this car, she handles alright but its just a different experience from driving a smaller vehicle and I notice the 2 1/2 hour drive far more. This could get a little tiring when we do proper, real road trips with 500 miles / day to just get to the place.
We had of course no idea how crowded it would be, as far as we could tell, this was the first weekend with the parks actually allowing camping and I had visions of hordes of nature-starved hippies clinging to trees along the way. But the “pet friendly” area had 2 other parties (incl 5 more dogs) out of ~12 spaces, so hardly overcrowded.
We set up camp and walked a quick 4.61 miles. Pine forest and the vegetation wasn’t nearly as far along as at sea level. It seemed to lag about a month behind, I didn’t realize that the 2300 ft in base elevation made such a big difference.
Overnight, quite some heavy rain but clearing up at 6am for a quick dog walk.
Overcast – made a great, slow breakfast and slowly packed the van again, the idea of this all was to create some form of routine that even the dog understands.
And then headed back home, although via a few Scenic Routes to check out for camping possibilities for the next trip.
Next time, need to focus a little more on hiking maps and locations, there is no cell phone connection locally. Other than that, easy, 1 day / overnight trip and (nearly) everything worked just fine.