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Day 38: Thu Aug 28, 1997

 We left the motel about 10 AM EDT and got some food at a local grocery store. I drove for awhile (still remembered how) and picked up I-79 north through the rolling hills of that part of West Virginia. The landscape was interesting, the rock layers were pretty much level, but there was almost no level ground, it was all dissected into medium sized hills. The land was almost all slope, fairly steep slope, with some stream and even less hilltop, certainly no good place for even a small town. I could imagine a good rainstorm would quickly flood the streams, maybe dangerously so.

We crossed into Maryland at 14:35 EDT, the speed limit changed from 70 to 65 MPH. That was interesting because I had shortly before commented that 70 on the curvy West Virginia road (even the interstate) seemed a bit fast (it's ok, don't change it, that's an upper limit not a lower limit). In Maryland the road was straighter but the limit dropped. The road still went up and down as it passed through the Ridge and Valley Physiographic Province. For some reason Sharleen decided to exit I-68 at Cumberland, don't know why, she was probably looking for food. Then she asked me navigation type questions, like which way she should go. I said I never get off there, the streets are too complicated to navigate and we had no map of the town. We took a random tour, saw a sign for a produce market, got pushed around by one-way and blocked-off streets and somehow bumbled back onto the interstate. We were getting close to home but I could see we would have to stop somewhere to deal with Sharleen's dependence on food. I need to get her interested in computers or something to take her mind off that topic (not that she's overweight, she actually wants to gain a little weight).

East of Cumberland, about halfway to Hagerstown, is a very interesting landform, a very large road cut through a mountain, Sidling Hill. Sidling Hill is one of many ridges in this area and like the others it runs north-east/south-west. Old Rt. 40 angles south to the top, then north down the east side. Its replacement, I-68, cuts through the mountain. Something like 400 feet of rock was removed to make this cut and on both sides of the road the layers are clearly exposed. In fact the exposure is so good that a visitors center was built to allow viewing and interpretation explaining why the rocks form the mountain. The sides are not straight up from the road but form large benches on both sides, like 4 giant steps, 80 feet high each. Three months before, in late May, we had spent most of a day exploring these benches. That tour was arranged for Don Schwert, a geologist from Fargo, North Dakota, by Carole Rabenhorst, a professor of Geography and Earth Science at Carroll Community College. Wally DeWiit, a geologist retired from the USGS, led the tour. Carole's husband Tom (professor of Cartography at the University of Maryland), Sharleen and myself went along. Don had just survived the record breaking Red River of the North flood of 1997 back in April. He had appeared on the NBC nightly news and other media as an expert on the geologic reasons for the flood. I had supplied him with satellite images for his flood web page of the snow cover that caused the problem and the flooding as it progressed. The weather that day at Sidling Hill was unusually pleasant for that time of year, sunny with a bright blue sky, no humidity and we could explore the benches and rocks as we pleased.

We didn't stop as we passed through Sidling Hill, we continued on to Hagerstown and stopped at one last buffet, not one of the better ones.

We reached home at 18:44 EDT. The car mileage was 225362.1. The trip totaled 7376.5 miles. For the entire trip we averaged 8.2 miles/hour. Wisteria, the Rag Doll cat, was looking out the window. Neither of the two cats acted especially happy to see us, they tried to pretend like nothing was different. Cats are careful not to show emotions, maybe they don't have any.

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