Page 92 - USA ROAD TRIP SUMMER of 2000

We stopped for lunch at a Maryland state park, Ft. Frederick. This

is a fort built by the Maryland Colony in 1756 to help the British
Army ward off the Indians that the French were inciting during the

French and Indian War. The British won this war in 1763 and all

claims the French had in Canada, the Mississippi Valley regions,
and the Great Lakes were lost to them forever.

We next stopped for a brief visit at one of the visitor’s centers for

the C&O Canal. This 184-mile canal was built by a company
headed by George Washington. It runs from Cumberland,

Pennsylvania to Georgetown, Maryland. Prior to the advent of rail
traffic (which spelled the doom for the canal), there were

shipments of coal and other goods from Pennsylvania and West

Virginia to Maryland and Washington, D.C. by this water route.
The towpath has been maintained as a National Historical Park

and is used by hikers and bikers along its entire length.

We’re in a small town at the northern terminus of the
Shenandoah National Park and will be going into it tomorrow. We

have made reservations at a hotel in the Park for two nights. The
TV weather station holds out hope for better weather the next

few days. One can only hope.

SHENANDOAH NP – DAY ONE

Friday - Again, we awoke to fog. Thick fog. Heavy fog. Unrelenting
fog. The folks on the Weather Station are giving as much play to

this wet blanket lying over Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West
Virginia, and Virginia as to the tropical storm in the Atlantic. This is

our third day in a row of it and today it lasted the longest.

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