Maryland continues to frustrate

October 13

When we woke up this morning, Nicole told me that her knee was still hurting, so we decided it might be a good idea to take a rest day and enjoy the park. All it would require from us would be to simply walk over to the ranger station where we checked in the night before. Or so we thought.

Just walking to the ranger station was quite a hike. It was over a mile and through a steep gorge. Why didn't the great state of Maryland simply build a bridge? When we arrived at the ranger station, though, the hike was the least of our concerns.

"We'd like to stay a second night," we say.

"I can't do that," says a uniformed park official. "I don't have the password."

Huh?

"Jerry's coming in at 2 o'clock," said someone else without a uniform. "He has the password. He can check you guys in. Until then, you have to check in at the headquarters."

Then the kicker. "It's not a long drive."

Yeah, it's not. It's two and half miles. From where we are now. It's three and half miles from the campsite. I try calling the number to reserve online to avoid wasting any more time. Every thing appears to go well until I hear this:

"We don't do same day reservations," says the voice on the other end of the phone. "You have to do that at the campsite."

I've had more productive conversations with my credit company than with these guys. Nicole and I have had enough. We trudge back through the steep gorge and back towards our campground. Once we reach our site, another uniformed park ranger is at our campsite, writing us a ticket. She sees us approach.

"Is this your campsite?" she asks.

"Yes," I say succinctly. "And we are on our way out."

She seems a little flustered by my attitude.

"Well, this is just a reminder that check out time is in 10 minutes."

"We know," said Nicole. "We tried to check in another day but they told us to walk to headquarters."

"Yeah," said the ranger. "It's not that far, it's just a short drive."

I sighed. I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah," said Nicole quickly. "We're on bikes."

And we're getting out of here.

Yumm!

Nicole's knee was feeling better, so we head out on the road towards Washington, having wasted two hours already. Still, it felt good to leave this park and all its bad vibes behind. Not long after we left the park, we found a nice Greek restaurant we're we each had pizza. At the other end of the plaza was a very nice bike shop with Bontrager Hard Case 700x32 mm tires. We were golden!

By the time we got back on the road, it was nearly 4 o'clock and we had only traveled about five miles. That wasn't looking good. We rode for about an hour and saw the sun starting to sink in the horizon. Now the sky was golden.

The bike shop had all of Lance Armstrong's Jerseys on display.

We got to an intersection and found ourselves with a tough decision to make. If we followed the Adventure Cycling Route, we would go west, then south towards Washington, with no campgrounds or hotels in between. If we went off the route, which lately has been a disaster, we would at least be able to find a hotel. Ironically, we were standing outside of a bar and restaurant called the Friendly Inn. It was neither friendly, nor an inn. I walked inside to speak to the owner to ask if we could gain permission to camp out behind his restaurant. He said he would get back to me. I made the mistake of waiting for his answer, wasting another 30 minutes of precious daylight in the process. He could have just said no and I would have rode on. Instead I waited and waited.

"I don't think he's going to answer us," said Nicole.

That left us with one choice: ride off the route to a hotel. It was dark now. I could see thanks to my NiteRider X2 headlight--it's nearly as bright as a car headlight. And they could see me. But the ride was still harrowing nonetheless. It took us about three hours to get to a hotel. Even though it was only 8:30, it felt like midnight. But we looked forward to the rest.

During our ride at night we saw grazing cows silhouetted against the evening sky.

Next stop: Washington D.C. For real this time . . .