Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

After yesterday’s disappointment, I had to try again. This time, I took mass transit across the river to Camden. I was able to find Whitman’s grave. There were no signs in the cemetery pointing to it, so I walked passed it at first. It is kind of off to the side from the entrance behind some trees. It was a family mausoleum, with what looked like his parents and at least some of his siblings. Walt got top billing, though. Most mausoleums only had the family name above the door. Whitman’s had “Walt Whitman”. One thing that surprised me a bit, at the graves of other authors I have visited (Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott), some people had put stones on the gravestones. Some had put pens on the gravestone or graves. At Whitman’s grave, there were only a couple of stones and no pens. I gathered a fistful of grass to put at the gate. It seemed a fitting tribute.

With the detour into Camden, I didn’t get on the road until noon. From at least when I entered Trenton, I have been riding through urban areas. There has been little or no break between cities. Today, about the first half of the ride was through industrial areas, with a few islands of run down residential neighborhoods and small towns. The shoulders was strewn with broken glass, nails, screws and various other bits of metal. I ended up getting a flat, sort of. My front tire has a very slow leak in it. It is slow enough that all I had to do was air up the tire a few times. I will have to fix it before I leave tomorrow, though. The industrial areas continued until about New Castle, DE, where it pretty suddenly became more suburban.

I passed through Delaware and a few miles into Maryland. Those are the tenth and eleventh states I have been in. Not only is Delaware a small state geographically, it has the smallest “Welcome to” signs I have seen so far. They are no larger than street signs. There isn’t even enough room to welcome people to the state, only to let them know they are in Delaware.