Stuck In Harriman, Tennessee

10/26/12:  We started home a week ago.  The boat is wrapped for the winter, it was getting cold in mid-coast Maine, and a local bank was advertising, "Loans for winter heating oil."  We drive over some of our favorite Maine country roads through low rolling hills covered in trees clothed in gold and orange leaves, and through the quaint old river towns of Wiscasset and Bath, dotted with New England church steeples.

At Brunswick we get onto the interstate and then onto toll roads, crossing the bridge with Kittery, Maine at one end and Portsmouth, New Hmapshire at the other.  It is windy and raining, but we are heading for California sunshine!  We pass Lawrence, Massachusttes, an old mill town where my daughter Katherine's Harvard roommate and friend, Nicole, grew up and is now a teacher.  The smoke stacks and red brick mill buildings still stand, largely deserted now.  We bypass Boston.  As dusk descends we are on the Massachusetts Turnpike and the fall folige is brilliant in the waning light of the day - full of the reds we did not see in Maine, along with oranges and golds.

The next morning when we get on the road, the sky is clear and the ground hugs pockets of evaporating fog in its hollows.  Along both sides of the highway trees crowd together, garbed in fiery fall foliage.  We are in Connecticut, passing red brick towns: Waterbury, Middlebury, Southbury.  Soon we are in New York State, paralleling the Hudson River.  There is a big barge being towed by a tug boat on the river - right where we will be sailing next spring.

The New York roads are as poorly maintained as the ones in California - we feel at home, dodging the potholes!  Our route edges us by New York City with signs: "Welcome to the Bronx," "Henry Hudson Parkway," "Welcome to Manhattan," and we are happy that it is not a work day when the roads would be jammed.  We drive on an ancient highway under the George Washington Bridge, and around and around, until we are up on the old suspension bridge, across the Hudson River and into New Jersey.  We pass through some of the more unattractive parts of New Jersey, highlighted by belching smoke, and a dreary wasteland of the detritus of industry before we move into the beautiful forested hills of rural New Jersey - the land where Washington crossed the Delaware.

Into Pennsylvania and across the Delaware River, through long, low hills covered in golden and green-leaved forests and valleys of farmland with domed grain silos.  We are in Pennsylvania Dutch country with pristine farms but also many fields of drought-stunted corn.  Now it is across the   Mason-Dixon Line and into Maryland where we spend the night in Hagerstown.

Searching for my caffeine fix the next morning, we see a bit of Hagerstown, which seems to be an old coal town, a classic northeastern industrial town.  There are so many different churches all over Hagerstown, one after the other.  It is hard to believe they were once filled with different ethnic religious sects of worshippers who came from all over Europe to seek their fortunes in America.  Brick is everywhere and in all architectural styles.  We pass many brick rowhouses: some are Victorian with decorative bay windows and plaster gingerbread, some are severe brick facades but with welcoming wooden front porches to soften them, some are more modern townhouses.
Back on the freeway, we pass a turnoff to the Civil War battle site of Antietam, and another to the "C&O Canal" (the Chesapeake and Ohio).  On through West Virginia and into Virginia.  There are signs to the "Shenandoah Battlefields," to "Stonewall Jackson's Office," to "George Washington's Office."  We drive through the wide Shenandoah Valley on our way to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The valley has huge systems of underground caverns, and giant holes in the ground that people base jump into; the hills are covered with millions of trees. 


Hills covered in fall foliage

We enter the 450-mile Blue Ridge Parkway through Shenandoah National Park.  It is a sunny day with puffs of white clouds.  We open the roof of the Tracker and cruise along the two-lane road: through fall-leaved forests, and by low stone walls built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930's, with stops at scenic overlooks of the Shenandoah Valley and of endless hills covered by millions and millions of trees in all shades of the fall colors. 



An overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway

We exit the national park, and the next day continue on the Blue Ridge Parkway through autumn-hued hardwood forests and views across the valleys of millions upon millions of deciduous trees of many shades marching over hills that stretch to the horizon. 



Lower tier of Crabtree Falls

We detour on a windy mountain road for a short walk to the five-tiers of Crabtree Falls.  Back again on the parkway, we start to see some evergreens, and move into lower altitudes with open farmland and homes amid the forestland.


That night we decide it is time to leave the parkway and head west for home.  We will pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway from the other end when we return next spring.  OMG, we are 123 miles from Nashville on an upgrade on Interstate 40 when the Tracker's engine blows.  This is serious engine failure; the new water pump has disintegrated, the radiator is melted, and the engine is toast.  We are stuck in Harriman, Tennessee for at least a week while we wait for the arrival of a low-mileage, used Tracker engine that Conrad orders, and it's installation.  Fortunately we are both OK and the garage that will fix the Tracker appears to have excellent mechanics.  Harriman is small but it is in pretty country.

Harriman, Tennessee

Our laptop crashed before we left Maine, so I can't download photographs to the blog; the car is out of commission, so we can't go home.  Yikes!  At least the people here at the Days Inn are giving us a deal on the room and letting me use the computer in the lobby, although the ability to send emails does not appear to be with in its capacity....