Union Bridge

Time is not something I have a lot of these days. That and sleep. Still, Dr J and I found time to take a little mini road trip on Friday. I wanted to take a map, find a spot neither of us had ever been, then take back roads to it. We chose Union Bridge, MD, a quaint little town on the border between Frederick and Carroll counties.

Let me tell you a little bit about Union Bridge, Maryland. Or, if you want someone else to tell you, go here. Or, who are we kidding, just got to wikipedia and save some time.

Union Bridge, though settled before the Revolutionary War, was incorporated in 1872.

In fact, this
“Union Bridge was founded by the Farquhars of Pennsylvania. Many of the shade trees to be found in the town today are descendants of the two sugar maples brought from Brownsville, Pennsylvania by Mrs. Elizabeth Farquhar Wright.”
is inscribed at the base of a small sugar maple in Union Bridge Community Park, known for its baseball field, closed community center, brisk winds, and lone man smoking dope in his pickup. The town itself, it would seem, is supported primarily by the ginormous Lehigh Cement Company plant which sits right on its outskirts.

It houses something like 1000 people, 930 of whom are white – according to Wikipedia, there’s one Asian (she works at the doctor’s office apparently). Someone from their town co-wrote a few episodes of the Simpsons.

We spent a few minutes poking around town, before realizing that everything was closed or otherwise uninteresting, despite the quaintness and generally pleasant atmosphere. We stopped at a 7-11, which was, comfortingly, still owned by foreigners, to pee in a little broom closet that also housed the CO2 tanks for the drink machine.

From there, we decided to track down a winery, as we had seen a handful of them on the drive in. The night before, while having dinner with two couples from Jen’s house church, the name Linganore came up. Low and behold, when we got there, I recognized the place. I had been there before, a few years early right after my first Achilles sabbatical – there was a race there that I wanted to run in, but couldn’t. We played the wine tasting game, hoofed it to the top of a chilly, windy hill and surveyed the countryside romantically, before realizing that wintertime weddings don’t really make sense at wineries. Not unless global warming shakes off its funk and gets its act together in the next few months at least. For whatever it’s worth, The Runaway Bride was shot on the hill in the only other winery I’ve been to in MD, Boordy Vineyards. We left with 6 bottles of wine, drove home on some other random back roads and spent the rest of the night playing tiddly winks and making elephants out of playdo.

So, when I say that I have no time, it’s because I’m doing stuff like that. I really can’t much complain.

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