Travels With Mike (Mike Chmielewski)

August, 2 - 11, 2001

     It's said in life that there are always highs and lows, and my trip was the same way.  After experiencing the grandeur of Acadia, which one of the greatest parts of my northern trip, it was no surprise that one of the worst parts of my trip came next.  Granted it was my fault.  I wanted to make it all the way down to Delmar, DE (near Ocean City, MD) where I had friends and a comfortable bed (after that night at the truck stop it was all I wanted) waiting.   Unfortunately as you can imagine it's a pretty long drive to Delmar (especially since I had to stop and check out some graduate programs), took around 22 hours.  That 22 hour drive was by far the worst of the many long drives I took and just flat out sucked.  I remember getting tired about hour 18 and slamming a 6 pack of Dr. Pepper, which made me really jumpy and twitchy, thinking I saw deer or people out of the corner of my eye and getting ready to jump on the brakes.  Slammed a six pack of Dr. Pepper to keep my awake and alert.  By the time I finally pulled into my buddy Dave's place at 4:20 in the mourning my nerves where shot from to much caffeine, and like any good bud he was waiting with a beer and other stuff to help take the edge off. Surprisingly we stayed up til around 5:30 talking and catching up, I think I was so happy to be done with my trip that I got my 5th wind or something.

     After sleeping til noon the next day the rest of my time there was good.  Introduced Dave to geocahing and he got hooked, his pregnant wife even came with us on an easy drive to cache.  My days were spent boogy boarding and relaxing on the beach at Assateague Island National Seashore (which by the way is the place to be once you get annoyed with the boardwalk, if you do stay at the boardwalk be sure to get some frozen custard from the place near the rollercoaster, the stuff is amazing and so addictive it should be illegal).  Attempted a cache on Assateague that was over a mile walk in the hot sand and we were just destroyed by biting flies the entire time, it was so bad that if you stopped you literally couldn't see you skin.  Turns out the cache wasn't there (since been archived) and we ended up swimming back just to get away from the flies).  Left after about a week and headed towards Shenandoah National Park.

August 12, 2001

     It was on the trail to the Dark Water Falls in Shenandoah that I learned just how valuable the right clothes were.  The hike started off great, nice beautiful hike along a river with numerous falls with  your goal being the Dark Water Falls immortalized by the famous photographer Ansel Adams.  It truly is a great scenic hike.  It was at the falls however that a blast of cold air came through and the next thing I know I was treated to a mountain storm.  I had thought about changing into my hiking gear but didn't feel like digging it out of my truck.  Instead I was wearing cotton cords, a cotton sweater, and I had one of those $1.99 ponchos in case it did rain.  Like I said in the begining I learned my lesson here.  The two mile hike back to my truck was miserable, my clothes must have sucked up 15 lbs of water (those little ponchos are pretty worthless) and I was cold, sneezing, and badly chaffed by the time it was over.  Ohh yeah my cheapo hiking shoes also blew out on the way back.  Not to mention the fact that it's hard to change out of soaking wet clothes without getting everything else wet when you live in your truck.  The next day I went out in the same conditions with my packable rain gear, polypro's, coolmax's etc and had a great time.  I think that was the last time I ever hiked without wearing the right gear.

August 13, 2001 

On my way out of the park I stopped in a little town to check my email.  While I was there I figured I'd hit the geocaching site and found out that there was a cache in the park on the Appalachian trail (since I plan on thru hiking the bad boy some day and I had become quite the geocaching addict by then I had to go do it, by the way this was before the NPS banned caching in the parks).  The cache was located on a rock overhang and while searching for it I dropped my camera off the cliff.  Fortunately it was a disposable, unfortunately it had some great pictures on it and I didn't want to pollute, so I found myself once again free climbing a cliff, figured if I fell I at least had my emergency cell phone, emergency whistle, and my gps so I could get help.  I made it down safely though at one point I had to let myself down using only my hands as I couldn't find footholds anywhere.  After about 15 minutes of searching I found the camera and climbed back up the cliff by now I was getting decent at picking a line though once again I had to rely entirely on my upperbody to pull myself up.  After making it back to the top and breathing a sigh of relief I still hadn't found the cache.  And as my journal states "After all that $#!$, death defying scaling (really shouldn't have done it) and what not, I was sure as he$$ gonna get that cache" (author's note: I'm still waiting for the time trying to get that last cache get's me in trouble, had an interesting experience out here in San Diego finding one of Rob's caches, but I'll eventually get to that story).  I finally found the cache and headed back pumped that I had not only hiked 4.2 miles on the AT but that I had also found a cache on it.  As I spent the night in a West Virginia recreation area I felt the first signs of a nasty cold coming on.

August 15, 2001 - August 17, 2001

Fortunately I got an email saying my parents where going to be at Port Clinton OH, since I was heading through OH I decided to go stay with them, because a nice warm hotel room was just what my burgeoning illness needed. (author's note: as I'm sitting here reading my journal and typing this all up, what strikes me is how little time I actually spent living in my truck that first month and how much time I spent in houses or hotels (though I never paid for a room), I never realized the change that came over me, it's almost laughable how I don't know of soft is the word, but how unequipped i was to deal with life on the road).  Flirted around with the cute girl interp ranger at the Hopewell National Historic Park (she was the only thing worthwhile there I have to say) and hit a few caches on my way to Port Clinton, then spent a few hours relaxing on the bay waiting for my folks to arrive.  Spent a couple days with them, got healthy, and got to eat like a champ (huge portions of fried fish and chips were unbelievably good, especially since I had basically been slowly starving myself.)  So it was in high spirits that I left Port Clinton the next mourning.

August 18, 2001

I left Ohio and headed into Michigan thinking this is going to be a great day.  I made for the little city of Jackson Michigan because I wanted to  re-visit this simply amazing icecream shop.  My family had went there when I was young and I remembered this place as being unbelievable.  A scoop of icecream as the size of a grapefruit, and they had huge rootbeer floats so big you had to sit in elevated chairs to drink them, and monster creations that were so heavy they took 4 waitresses to bring out.  As I drove through Jackson thinking of this icecream shangri-la my visions of bliss were quickly wiped out as some lady merges into me and smashes her car into my brand new truck.  She caught my rear bumper and basically ran all the way up the driver side before crunching my door.  I was in shock, I'd never been in an accident before.  I drove a freakin 92 oxidized paint tempo for almost seven years and no one touched that, I finally get a brand new vehicle and after only a few months someone decides to play destruction derby with me.  I was devasted and wanted to cry.  My baby, my truck, the first vehicle that I had bought with my own money, my beautiful black truck that I'd washed and waxed twice a week before I left,  my brand spanking new 2001 Ranger, was crumpled.  The police arrived and I found out something even worse.  Michigan is a no fault state, which means even though she hit me it makes no difference.  Her insurance company pays her damage and mine pays mine.  Meaning there goes a huge chunk of my trip budget on a deductable, $500 was a harsh blow to someone who couldn't afford to pay for campsites or eat at any fast food place.  I got the rope out, tied my door shut (it wouldn't close) and drove home depressed, dejected, and totally miserable.  Got home at 4:00 in the mourning, parked my truck under the canopy so the coming storm wouldn't soak the interior, walked into my room and fell into my bed.