It’s Alive!
March 20, 2024 – Day 5
Lums Pond State Park Campground
We woke up around quarter past 5 to make sure that we had the coach ready by 6AM.
There wasn’t a knock on the door at 6 am so we waited a few minutes. Paul went into the office to ask what the game plan was. Nicole greeted him—they must have caffiene in their veins—and told us that the mechanic who was going to work on our coach wasn’t in yet. Arghh….
Then Paul got to deal with the joy of having his LinkedIn account hacked. Despite having a quality password Paul isn’t sure how they did it. But they did it. Paul got that straightened out. We both changed all our email and financial passwords. These jerks find out your email via your account, in this case a LinkedIn account. Next they try to break into your email and to pick out banking & credit card info. This is exactly why you don’t reuse passwords or user names between site, especially banking and credit card sites.
(susan here: Now is a good time to mention you shouldn’t use email addresses as a user name with sensitive sites like your credit cards or banks. Fluffy McFluffypants and LetMeIn or 123456789 as a password will get you compromised eventually. Always make up gibberish for user names & passwords! Include punctuation, numbers, upper and lower case and make it as them both as long as they’ll let you. The name your mother gave you is not Janie Jones. It’s NdPQ0Uq8Gw. You get the idea? Write it down if you don’t have an automatic password saver. Never, ever reuse those at any other site. In other words? Don’t make it easy for them to guess.)
Around 7 or 7:30 we got tired of sitting around and wanted breakfast. Nicolle told us that they were waiting on parts which were due to arrive around 9AM. Wish we had known that last night, oh well. The Christiana Truck Stop diner did not look appetizing. Paul saw one of the mechanics getting breakfast. It was some sort of “thing” wrapped up in foil. It had the potential of another Sadness Sandwich™ (Susan here: If sadness were a sandwich it would certainly be one of those McDonald’s chicken sandwich with no lettuce or tomato, lying there limp steaming in their own head in a foil bag. When I looked at it I thought “If sadness were a sandwich this would be it.” The name Sadness Sandwich was born.) Neither of us were up for that. A quick Yelp search yielded the Legends Restaurant and Bakery with “an extensive breakfast menu.” It was a short drive away and away we went.
Susan had a very good Western Omelette. Paul had The Legends Special which is a ton and a half of food. Really, it was massive. Only half of it was very good. Half, well, it wasn’t good. We both could have made the fried eggs and potatoes better. Paul is just learning how to make fried eggs. Susan has showed Paul once and but he still hasn’t done it solo. (susan here: it’s “expert level” egg making in a stainless steel pan. If you’re wondering I don’t break yolks often either. It’s just low, slow and a side of patience.)
After breakfast, what to do? It was cold and the forecast was for rain. Plus, we were both beyond exhausted. So, we went to the Mall! Susan was having an issue with her phone and we think they cleared it up. They also helped Paul with a tech issue. He wanted to change his Apple ID password and last time he tried that, well, he got scary dialog prompts so he did a “NOPE!” right out of that. The helpful tech fixed Paul on the spot, not even checking him into the system!
Right when we were finishing up Nicolle called. Clifford was alive! And well!! It was the spark plug wires that needed replacing. The day prior they told us that it was likely. We told them it had been done but they said it wasn’t in their system. If it’s not in the system it never happened. However, the selling dealer and Tiffin both insisted that it had been done when we bought it. Ford had no record of it being done. Better it was warranty work so it was free to us. Clifford purred like a big red dog on the drive back to Lums Pond.
Back at Lum’s Pond, it was lunchtime so Susan defrosted some dal she had made back in NH and frozen. (susan here: gotta love freezer meals!) She finally gave in and took a couple hour nap. Paul didn’t want to nap because he knew that would mess with falling asleep at night. He had hoped to play radio but the winds were gusting to 40mph. Not exactly hoisting an antenna weather. Instead with the sofa calling his name he succumbed and read his book.
Maybe he closed his eyes briefly. (susan here: HA! I KNEW IT.)
When Susan got up Paul realized he could use the winter radio setup with a different antenna than is mounted on the Jeep. So off he went to the nearby “POTA” (parksontheair.com) park, which was the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Conservation Area, about 2 miles down the road. He had a great time, which really made up for the bad radio day 2 days ago and all the crap we both had to deal with because the coach broken. It was a surprisingly difficult and tiring couple of days.
Paul was so tired he used “digital modes” which means that his laptop was talking to other hams’ laptops around the world. This seems sort of dumb until you realize that he’s not using the internet to do it. Just a ham radio, laptop, some accessories and a 17′ metal antenna.
That’s it, but wait, we have some corrections thanks to my brother John!
“The white NotDogwoods, especially in a huge seemingly big group like your photo, are Bradford Pears aka Callery Pears. I saw a lot of them on RT-896 yesterday after leaving Lums Pond. Beautiful in spring but highly invasive, a lot of towns now ban them. They are also a weak tree. Mom’s next door neighbor had one. The trees like to spread up like the letter Y and during a high wind storm one trunk of the Y broke and from then on the 2/3rds of a tree looked ridiculous. The blight of the once beloved Bradford pear.“
That’s a depressing article to read. We’re both, eventually, planning on making a large portion of our yard into a “natives” garden for pollinators and birds. We’ve been reading a lot about what are the good species to have. Basically, it if belongs here it’s covered in bugs and birds eat those bugs. But, if it doesn’t belong here there are something like 75% fewer bugs and therefore fewer birds! Paul actually had heard of the Bradford Pear years ago. Just yesterday we were both admiring those horrid things.
Yesterday, I had mentioned the river outside of the brew pub we were eating lunch at was the Christiana River. That was incorrect. It is actually the Christina River. Both names are used today for various stores, etc. The area is Christiana, the river is Christina. Named after Queen Christina of Sweden the name changed several times over 200 years and in 1937 it was decided to officially name the river Christina. Fun fact.
It reminds me of the Hillsboro vs Hillsborough NH conundrum.
Daily: 0
Driving Miles/Day: 208
Overall Miles/Day: 83