Dew. Wow. The inside and outside of our tent was saturated with clinging water, just waiting to deposit on us if we made the mistake of brushing up against its surface. We carefully exited the tent, then took a towel and wiped down the inside and outside of the tent to remove as much water as possible before stuffing it away for the day.
About 8:30 am we were on our bikes and ready to move down the road. We stopped at registration and paid our camping fee, €15. Then it was back thru picturesque Xanten and then north out of town. We stopped at the bakery in town for a soda for Sally, and a pastry.
There are two large lakes just outside Xanten, which we cycled past in the first 2-3 miles. Then it was up on the dike for most of the rest of the day. We had a little wind to our backs, so we just motored along for, enjoying the sun and beautiful countryside. Again, we bypassed most of the small towns.
At about 14 miles, the object of our curiosity came into view. Germany was building a nuclear power plant in the 1980's, spending about 4 billion dollars per plant. This one, a fast breeder reactor, was completed and was going through tests when Chernobyl happened. Public outcry forced the decision to shutter the plant before any nuclear fuel was brought on site. The expensive components were sold off and the plant sat empty. A enterprising business man bought the facility for $3 million dollars. First thing he did was strip out all the wiring and sell the copper, making back more than his $3 million dollar investment. Next, and this is the fun part, he turned the site into an amusement park. The cooling tower has a spinning ride that comes out the top and he painted jagged mountain scenes on the outside and turned it into a climbing wall! There are numerous other rides as well. He turned the control room building into a hotel. A true destination theme park. The site has about 600,000 visitors a year.
We pulled into the parking lot about 10:30 am and toyed with the idea of spending the $52 entrance fee. It was above our budget, but we talked ourselves into it, just for the chance to go on a ride in a cooling tower and so I could rock climb the outside of it. But, we quickly realized we had no way to secure all our gear hanging off our bikes. No lockers were available and no fenced storage. The chance of losing our gear to theft was small, but the consequences were huge. We decided to let it go. We ate lunch on a bench outside the entrance gate, then started peddling our way north again.
We stopped a couple hours later for a beer and a pop, but the food at the adjacent tables looked so good, we decided to eat an early dinner. We both ordered potatoes and eggs, my potatoes with German sausage. It was delicious!
Back on the dike and about half an hour later we crossed the German-Netherlands border and arrived at Millingen an der Rijn. We cruised town, looking for camping. Seeing none, we stopped at the information office, but it turned out to be a hotel service. They gave us funny looks when we asked about camping. I found a campsite across the Rhine using my GPS. We made our way to a grocery store, got food for dinner, then rode back to the dike and down to the Rhine for our ferry ride across. This was a passenger only ferry, no cars. We scaled the ramp on the other side and rode the mile and a half to our campground for the evening.
We were greeted in the reception office by a very jolly man of 59. He and a partner had just bought the entire area from the state and we're making a go of it. The state claimed they were losing money on it, but he had already turned a profit in his first year of ownership. We had a long conversation with him, enjoying his humor and kindness. We finally left the office, on a slight rise, and rode down to find a place to camp. We picked an area with shade (it was 82°) between two permanent looking travel trailers, or "caravans" as the English call them.
I was really tired. I pitched the tent and crawled in for a nap. Sally went to take a shower. As she walked away she stopped to talk to our neighbors as I listened through the tent wall. The people said they stayed there, in their trailer for six months. There was a community of them that did so, as was obvious later in the evening as they all got together to drink and talk. After Sally walked away I could hear the women chattering in German, repeating Sally's statement of surprise at six months and giggling about it. What do you do here in a travel trailer for six months? We decided they were the modern day equivalent of gypsies.
Because we had eaten our dinner of potatoes, eggs and sausage earlier in the afternoon, we settled for a small pot of chicken broth soup before retiring to the tent about 8:30 pm. The neighbors, only about 20' feet away talked and laughed into the night, but their conversation was in German so it was just white noise and I was too tired to notice. I fell asleep.
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