135 miles, 7 hours.

Well, it was finally time to leave our comfortable guest room in Washington DC and head north. It was intermittently raining, so on our way up to Baltimore we got totally soaked. Not very fun.

We trudged through the rain to some things in Baltimore that I wanted to see, including the inner city. Even the formerly rough areas seemed safe at first, but it got progressively more dangerous and scary until we were on a couple of streets that really made me nervous. I had to pay very close attention and make sure we had at least a few different escape routes.

Every block in these rough areas had security cameras for the police. They also had a light bar on top of the cameras, similar to what you'd find on a police car. Several of the light bars were activated; I don't know what that means.

In the rough areas, many of the abandoned row houses would be boarded up with cheap plywood. Some blocks would contain as many boarded-up houses as not. That's pretty much the definition of blight (or urban decay). It certainly creates a feeling of hopelessness. We rode past at least three different sets of projects- some that I'd remembered and had been in. They were still scary-looking places.

After a quick pass by Johns Hopkins Hospital, we headed out of the city. We made a stop in at REI- we were out of freeze-dried food for camping, and Tamara wanted to look for a pair of pants.

We then headed north to York, Pennsylvania, which is home to the biggest Harley-Davidson factory. They produce the "big bikes" including the Road King, Electra Glide, and Softail models. The tour was interesting- it was fun to see new bikes tested, since they start them and immediately take them up to over 75mph. I'm amused that the owners manual restricts speeds during the first 500 miles, given that the factory tests them at high speeds during the first minute of the engine's life!

The HD plant is huge (1.5 million square feet). That's huge- about six times as large as a Wal-Mart or Costco. Besides assembling the motors, they do most of the work at that plant- pressing and machining parts, sanding and painting, even chroming.

After going to the Harley-Davidson factory, we had a bite to eat and checked in to a cheap motel for the night. It was better than camping in the rain.