Day 3: Found by chance
We woke refreshed and took off to find the ferry across the river. That was cool. On the other side we looked for, and found, the castle (Arcon) gardens. We took some pics but decided to pass on going inside and instead headed for Ghent. We ran into traffic in Antwerp and after sitting for 45 minutes we made it to bottleneck. All of a sudden Dave and Pat in the camper behind us were redirected another direction. As we drove off we told them over the walkie talkie that we would meet them at the first rest stop on the other side of the tunnel. While we were waiting a large group of young men showed up and poured out of their cars. It turns out this was the end of a bachelor weekend. Someone started playing music and they all formed a conga line and the groom stripped down to his thong for a bit. One of the guys loaned me his handy and I called Hank to inform him that we had been waiting 1 1/2 hours for Dave and Pat. We decided to drive on to Ghent stopping at every rest stop to check for them with no luck. In Ghent we went down several cobblestone streets past many centuries old buildings that had somehow managed to escape WWII. (I later found out that many of them had been rebuilt after the war to their prewar beauty.) We found a parking spot and strolled around for awhile. Just as I was getting ready to take a picture of a bay window Bus used as an ice cream truck I glanced over and Dave was driving right towards us. Dave and Pat were both busy gawking so I had to wave and jump around to get their attention. We later all laughed about our good luck over a great filet mignon. After dinner we headed south awhile to a campground we had looked up in a book Dave had picked up. Because the book was in Dutch finding the campground was more difficult than we anticipated. By the time we found it night was falling and we quickly set up our tent before settling down for a well deserved drink. Around 10 o'clock it started to rain so we quickly ducked into the tent for the night.
Day 4: Rain and Gypsies
The night was punctuated by steady thunder and lightning and we woke up to a driving rainstorm and a few leaks in the tent. After awhile it let up some and we got out and took a hot shower. Dave and Pat were still not up and as Mary and I sat gloomily in the tent the rain came down hard again. Sometime after 11 we gave up and broke camp in the rain determined to get on the road. Before leaving we knocked on their door and Dave invited us in. I told him we were really unhappy with the slow progress but after some venting I settled down and we took off with the goal of getting as close to Normandie as we could that night. We took a bunch of secondary roads thru quaint towns and after a couple hours we outran the rain which was replaced by heavy wind. We finally made it to Abbeville and tried to get directions to a grocery store from the non-English speaking locals. It turns out that the word groceries is not a good word to use when trying to get that across. But eventually I got the concept across and we found a large supermarket. After getting the groceries we went another 45 minutes on the freeway to Rouen. But once in the city it took us awhile to find the right road out of town. When we finally found the town where the campground was supposed to be we couldn't find it. A local directed us up the road where we found no real campground but did find a bunch of campers set up on what turned out to be the the grounds of a community center. It turned out to be a Gypsy carnival group that had broken down that day and were ready to move on the next morning. We blended in and made spaghetti for dinner.
