Today was a good day, although it didn't go exactly as expected (more on that later). Unlike yesterday, today was spent mostly on low volume country roads, alternating between farmlands and woodlands.
I started out on the Georgetown-Lewes Rail Trail. This is a very nice paved trail that is popular with walkers and cyclists alike.
This is Harold, who winters in Inverness, FL (near our hometown). We had a nice chat about the Withlacoochee Trail and made plans to take a ride together this winter.
My first stop was at the Milton Historical Society. They have a small museum that tells the history of Milton. The Docent told me that Milton's history is about the 4 "B"s - Boat building, buttons, beans and beer. He also told me that no one knows why the town was named Milton. Some say it was named after the poet and others say it was named for all the mills that were in the area.
A button making machine. Milton was known as a button manufacturing center. During this era, the buttons were made from abalone, which was shipped in from Australia. Interestingly, only the button blanks were made in Milton. The blanks were shipped to NYC or Philly to be polished and have the holes drilled.
After I left the museum, I called Jeanna and made plans to meet her in Felton, which was about 20 miles away, for lunch. I told her I would be stopping at the Williamsville Country Store for a break but should be in Felton in less than 2 hours. As soon as I left the store, I punched the button on my helmet to call Jeanna again to tell her I was on my way, but the phone didn't dial. (Some background: I have a SENA Helmet that has integrated Bluetooth and an FM Radio and is paired to my phone. It has three multifunction buttons for making phone calls, listening to music, or listening to the radio, etc.)
I tried calling her several times, but nothing was going through. I turned my helmet off and back on, but again nothing worked. Thinking, my speed-dial for Jeanna was messed up, I then tried calling a friend for a comm check, but that didn't work either (Or so I thought. It turns out that call went through, but one way - they could hear me, but I could not hear them. When they heard me repeatedly saying "Hello, Hello, Hello", they became worried that something had happened to me, and they tried to call Jeanna, but they could not reach her either). It turns out that either there was a network outage or Jeanna was in a dead zone, but we don't know which.
All the above wouldn't have mattered much, except for the fact that while I was trying to reach Jeanna, I was not paying attention to my Garmin and had missed a turn as soon as I left the country store (it was at a 5-point intersection, and I took the first right instead of the second). I was all the way to Milford before I discovered my mistake (you can see the "detour" on the map). All-in-all, it cost me a little over 6 miles, and we didn't get to eat at the restaurant that Jeanna had picked out because it closed before I got there.
Looking back, the whole thing was a comedy of errors, but when I found myself in Milford I wasn't laughing!
A few miles past Milton I saw this chimney, but have no idea what it was part of. The opening looks too high to be part of a house.
