My resolution to write about every place I stay is taking a hit from moving too fast and being too stressed. For my own future reference, when I am trying to put together my Year Three itinerary eleven months and a couple weeks from now, I went from Allentown to:

Barber Homestead in Westport, NY (independent) for two days
Jacques Cartier State Park in Morristown, NY (state park) for two days
Cedar Beach Campground in Eganville, Ontario (independent) for two days
Lake Saint Peter Provincial Park in Lake Saint Peter, Ontario (province) for two days

This is not how I want to travel. It’s made worse right now because of Zelda, of course, because it’s not relaxing at all to be traveling with an injured dog. I was stressed yesterday about how pink her stitches looked, debating whether I should find a vet to take a look. Finally decided that the problem was probably that she was jumping too much and I’d wait and see. They look better today and she’s getting seriously restless. She’s still limping heavily, but she wants to go for her walks. She was ridiculously excited this morning when I got her leash out. Hmm, and I just remembered that I totally forgot to give her the painkiller she’s supposed to have this evening. Must do that.

But Lake Saint Peter first — I’m not going to remember this park, unfortunately. No walks means that we haven’t seen anything but our campsite. It’s a nice campsite, surrounded by trees, feels very private, even though there’s plenty of other campsites within hearing distance. Many ferns, many birch trees, and a generous supply of plants that look like they might be poison ivy, but I hope are not. There’s a total fire ban on, so no lovely smell of campfires at night, and it’s been overcast and rainy, so no stars either. I know that there’s a lake somewhere — I suspect it’s a nice lake — but it’s not within walking distance for a dog that can’t walk. So basically, I have been sitting inside the van, feeling tired and anxious.

Fortunately, it is a very peaceful view from the window.

Tomorrow, I head out to pick up R. I’ll get him first thing in the morning and then we’re going to make a long, long drive — over six hours — into Vermont. We’ll be camping at a state park there through the weekend, no electricity, but good company. And maybe Zelda will get to go to an animal acupuncturist, because of course they have those in Vermont.

Deer and bunnies and redwing blackbirds, lush green grass and huge campsites, trees and terrific hikes and an enormous lake nearby… of the four Ohio state parks where I’ve camped, Maumee Bay, near Toledo, is by far the nicest. I could happily stay here for weeks, I think.

The one negative is the bugs. There are tons of them. I try to remind myself that bugs are a symbol of a healthy eco-system and no bugs would mean no redwing blackbirds, but still… not a bug fan.

And alas, one of the bug problems turns out to be a problem that it’s too late to worry about, at least to some extent. There were warning notices at the front desk about ehrlichiosis — a tick-borne disease — and how to avoid getting it and what symptoms to watch for. Unfortunately, Zelda was diagnosed with the disease an hour earlier at the vet. So I guess I can worry about catching it myself, but I don’t have to worry about Zelda getting it. She’s on antibiotics and I’m trying not to obsess too much. Or to think that if I’d never moved into a van, never started traveling, she would never have encountered whatever tick made her sick. Those thoughts are not useful thoughts.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Michigan. Still not done with Grace — I’ve spent hours and hours of writing time on a single page in the past week. I thought I knew how something ended — thought I knew it for a long, long time — but when it came down to it, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Or I couldn’t make it work the way I wanted it to. But I think today I finally let go of that section and moved on.

And now I’ll do the same with this blog post. 🙂

Edited to add: At the vet’s office, Zelda was the third Zelda they’d seen in two days, but the other two were both, “Zelda, Princess of Hyrule.” I heard that and said (of course), “But my Zelda is the Princess of Hyrule!” She was, in fact, named after Zelda, Princess of Hyrule, I just never used the full name. But I’m totally adding it now.

Why is driving so exhausting?

I guess that’s a rhetorical question: the answers are sort of obvious. But there’s a reason most people don’t spontaneously say, “Hey, let’s go for a three hour drive today, won’t that be fun?” Or a four-hour drive, or a seven-hour drive. And driving slowly — with breaks of a day or two between chunks of long driving days — doesn’t make the experience any better. Crazy ten-hour days of driving require recovery days but so, apparently, do five-hour driving days. At least for me.

But I broke my drive from South Carolina to Pennsylvania by stopping for two nights at Salthouse Branch Recreation Area in Henry, Virginia. It was about five hours from Santee — albeit closer to seven with stops for gas, dog walks, and lunch, so I got there on Friday with plenty of time to relax. Along with all the rest of the people in the state who wanted a nice relaxing Memorial weekend Friday. I believe I complained that at Santee I could see my neighbor’s trailer instead of a nice view? At Salthouse Branch, I could see eleven trailers from the van door. At that, it was still nicer than a typical independent parking-lot style campground: my site was small and not level but at least there were grass and trees and beautiful water within walking distance.

Also some nice looking trails, but I did not take advantage of them. It was a bad combination of circumstances. First, I was tired — long driving days do that to me. Second, it was hot enough that I didn’t want to wear long pants and socks and hiking boots. And third, although also relevant to the second point, there were ticks. So many ticks that I was literally flicking them off the water hose and steps. Given the number of tick-borne diseases that I’m scared of, bare legs in the woods felt like a no-brainer level of stupid thing to do. So we admired the above path, but we didn’t go very far on it.

Also, there were dogs. Not on the trails, but in the campground. Lots and lots of dogs. Oh, my gosh, the dogs. I like dogs (obviously.) But at least some of these dogs’ owners had given up on keeping their dogs quiet and there were so many dogs in the campground that there was a continual dog chorus going on. Two brown labs behind me needed to say hello to every passing visitor and the little black dog across from them felt compelled to respond. The park was completely full, so there were a great many passing visitors.

Zelda never barked once. I would be a smug dog owner about that — my good dog! — but she’s losing her hearing (sadly, another symptom of canine dementia), so I think she probably just didn’t hear them. She’s also gone back to being ridiculously picky about her food. Yesterday, she declined steak for breakfast in favor of a couple bites of my niece’s breakfast cereal. I will seriously feed this dog anything that she wants, but she changes her mind about what that is on an hourly basis. But her energy level is great and she’s been enjoying playing with toys again, so I’m not worrying too much.

And I’m now in Pennsylvania, where I will be staying for the next three weeks. Less driving, more family time, yay! And hopefully some writing (finally!!) of an emotionally satisfying romantic ending. I’m as close as I’ve ever been with finishing a first draft and I have no impulse to go back and start re-writing, so that’s good news. Now if I could just get on with it!