LOST!

After finally getting home from work at 930 Friday night, I was ready to begin the weekend. A friend and I had planned a trip to the beach for Saturday - so Saturday morning I found myself running around like a crazy person trying to get all the chores I had planned to take care of Friday night finished. My friend and I had planned to leave between 10-12, but both he and I got caught up in weekend needs, so we instead decided to head up to Harper Ferry and Martinsburg, thinking that we would escape the heat of the city in the mountains. No such luck,

Harper's Ferry was nice enough, a bit Disneyfied with "perfectly preserved" examples of 19th century life performing for the throbbing hoardes of sweaty, whiny tourists. We hung around for about an hour before moving on. Our next stop was Martinsburg!

We had been told by a former colleague of ours at the GHI that Martinsburg was a cute little town. Well, it certainly was cute - but it was dead! We got there around 5pm, and all the stores had closed up and there was no one on the street. We breezed through town and headed for Shepherdstown.

I had been to Shepherdstown for a gov't training class and remembered that there had been a cute little town there... so off er went. And boy was I happy we decided to stop! The town of Shepherdstown is similar to a lot of other old, small towns, but since it is also the home of Shepherd College, it was lively, with lots of open shops and things going on. We stopped at the Lucky Dog Cafe, the perfect independent college-town coffee shop, where I had- no joke - the best vanilla latte of my life. It was perfection. It was an awesome place.

There was a little art gallery with a show of art by the local college students. Most of it was pretty trite, but there was one piece that was quite nice. Anyway, we walked around the town, looking at the old buildings and churches, just enjoying the energy in this town that was absent in so many others. It is a trip I am looking forward to making again.

The real highlight (lowlight) of the trip was us getting hideously lost on our way home. We missed the turn out of Shepherdtown that would have taken us over the bridge over the Potomac and into Sharpsburg, MD - where the battle of Antietam was fought - and back towards Frederick. We ended up on these small little country roads along the river, which wasn't so bad until they turned inland, and we had no idea how to get back to civilization. We were about as lost as we could be - luckily we had just filled the gas tank. We drove for nearly 45 minutes before truly starting to get worried. The sun was fading fast, and the very last thing we wanted was to be on these back roads after dark.


Where we got lost

Finally, after trying several turns and not being able to find a proper highway, I called DH to see if he could help us out with Google Maps or something. In the end (of course, since I am writing this from home) we did find our way - but somehow we had traveled south fom Shepherdstown all the way back south of Charlestown on these convoluted back roads.

Anyway, it was an adventure!