Fear The Goat

 

Located about a half hour drive southeast of Washington DC is the quaint little town of Annapolis, Maryland. Tiny little narrow streets and colonial architecture belies the fact that Annapolis is the capitol of Maryland. The one-way streets are so narrow that if you open your car door to get out, you will be stopping traffic. They will all have to wait until you are out and about. Annapolis is also the home of the United States Naval Academy, the second oldest service academy in the U.S. I have a special place in my heart for the Academy as both my father ('49 Marines) and my brother ('75 Navy) attended this institution.-

We arranged for a tour in an electric car that they call Gem. It is a cute, weird little car but the Naval Academy (called the Yard) is huge and we were able to see so much more than if we had taken a walking tour.

Picture from the USNA website

I was so impressed as I learned all that these Midshipmen have to go through to graduate and become officers. High academic, physical and moral standards are expected.

The Chapel

John Paul Jones is thought to be one of the greatest naval commanders in the history of the United States. He is also credited as being "the father of the American Navy". The quote "I have not begun to fight" is probably what is remembered most by civilians. Interesting fact:  John Paul was his name at birth in Scotland.  After killing a couple of sailors(he claimed self-defence) he fled to America and assumed the last name Jones.  

Jones died in France and his body was doused in copious amounts of alcohol, surrounded by straw and placed in a lead coffin.  He was buried outside of Paris and for 113 years, there he remained.  In 1905, his coffin was found and the mummified remains were compared to the bust shown below.  It was determined that it was Jones and he was brought back and interred in the crypt under the chapel.  

John Paul Jones crypt

John Paul Jones himself
Our guide showed us a picture of the mummified body of Jones. 
He pretty much looked like this bust(except 115 years older).

Herndon Monument
Site of the Plebes-No-More ceremony.  A  plebe's (first-year student) hat is placed on top of the monument.  The monument is greased with lard.  The plebes then have to work together to climb the monument removing the plebes hat.  When this is accomplished they are Plebes-No-More.  

The only reason this picture is here is because I was impressed that this building is so large that they have a regulation size football field which can be rolled up when not in use.

Bancroft Hall: Housing the entire brigade of over 4,000 Midshipmen, it is considered to be one of the largest dormitories in the world (it even has it's own zipcode).There are a total of 1,873 dorm rooms, 4.8 miles of corridors, and 33 acres of floor space.  From a plaque on a wall inside

 

The entry into Bancroft Hall
Not too shabby.

A sample Midshipmen's room

Bill the Goat - mascot of the USNA

I Can't Keep Track Of Where I Am

 

Driving thru northern West Virginia is a little strange. The northern border is not laid out very straight. I was almost dizzy reading the signs as I drove down the road.

Welcome to West Virginia.

Welcome to Pennsylvania.

Welcome to West Virginia.

Welcome to Maryland.

Welcome to West Virginia.

The drive itself was beautiful, the leaves were at peak and the mountains were full of color.

I stop for the night at another Harvest Host. This one is a Creamery and restaurant. No cows here, but good food.

I stopped for two nights at the Hollywood Casino, not to gamble but it was a free place to park and it was close to a site I wanted to see. This is my fourth night boondocking with no electrical hookups. Normally, this is not a problem, but it has been four solid days of cold, cold rain. My solar panels have not been able to keep up with charging my batteries. Eventually the sun came out but I found it rather stressful, watching my battery power going down, down, down.

Harper's Ferry is a National Historical Park. Harper's Ferry is considered a Historical Park and not a Historical Site, Memorial etc because there are so many facets to it. You have George Washington choosing to establish an armory here, innovations that fueled the Industrial Revolution, Civil War (the town changed hands eight times during the War), and we cannot forget John Brown who helped propel the nation toward the Civil War. There was much, much, much to learn here. It is situated right on the corner of West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.

A picturesque town Harper's Ferry is

This is where the Shenandoah and the Potomac River come together 

John Brown's Fort - where he made his last stand

The sun came out finally and I landed at another Harvest Host site - The Suttler Post Farm Clydesdales, the home of Maryland's only six-horse hitch. I picked this place because it was close to my friends Phoenix and Jag. They came over to the farm and joined me for a farm tour and then brought me home with them for a stellar dinner.

Well Hi!!!

I like this picture of JAG

These guys are huge - look at the size of this horse shoe

It wasn't all giant horses.  Meet Clyde, an 18 year old African Tortoise.

Side note: I was at the Clydesdale farm for one night. It took me almost a whole week to get rid of all the flies who decided they wanted to travel with me.

Spending Time in Tieland

Greg (the solar guy) told me that I needed a bigger inverter. The one I have now cannot handle running the microwave or two heaters at one time. We are looking at about $1600. I'll just put it on my Xmas list. He also told me that all I needed to do was reset the inverter and then all will be back to status quo.  The problem is that to do the reset, I have to lift my bed up and prop it up.  Then I have to remove about six screws and slide some paneling around.  At this point, I will uncover the inverter and push one little black button.  As I've mentioned before - I am not mechanically inclined.  It was a challenge to figure all this out.  But I persevered and got to push that little button.  I also found a giant drill under the bed.  I think it is sort of like when a doctor operates on you and forgets something inside of you when he sews you up.  I had to find a post office so I could send it back to Greg.

This is what it looks like under my bed.  I hope somebody knows what they are doing there

Saturday it finally sort of stopped raining in the morning I went to Greenbelt Park, a park that is in northwest DC and is managed by the National Park Service. So, it is a national park, but it isn't a NATIONAL park. I think only Congress can decide if something is a NATIONAL park or not.  The rest of the day was spent trying to get everything together to get back on the road and napping.  And napping some more.  Life on the road is hard.

 

Sunday - I'm outta DC.    I was heading to see some friends down in southern Maryland.  But first I had to do the obligatory sightseeing.

 

Fort Washington.  One day, ol' George was sitting on the front porch of Mount Vernon, overlooking the Potomac when he thought to himself, we need a fort right across the river from where I'm sitting to protect Washington DC from being burned.  And his word became a fort by the name of Fort Washington.  Imagine that.  Interesting that out west, it seemed like all I was seeing was pueblos.  Now it seems like it is all forts.

 

Fort Washington had an interesting history, but I swear the main focus of all of the exhibits was all the types of guns and cannons that were used during it's history.  Towards the fort's latter days, they had something called an Endicott cannon which could fire seven miles and it would get raised up on a platform, fired and then the platform would lower under ground so they could load the cannon again.  There must have been some reason that this was more efficient.  Interesting as all that was, one of the things I found really fascinating was this:

 

A solar powered trash compacter - cool, huh?

 

 

Light at the end of the tunnel........sorry, couldn't help myself

 

Thomas Stone Historic Site - Thomas Stone was a mild mannered lawyer who was one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.  His homestead in Maryland became a historic site because it is the only homestead of one of the signers that is still pretty much intact from when Tom Stone lived there.

 

Some of these NPS sites have hundreds and hundreds of visitors a day.  There are other sites where they might be lucky to have one or two people show up in a day.  Thomas Stone Historic Site is one of the latter types of NPS sites.  What this means is that these highly trained park rangers might have a little free time on their hands.  I had my own personal park ranger talking to me for about two hours as he told me story after story of the Revolutionary War and also Tom Stone.  It was really fascinating and entertaining but finally I had to tell him enough.  My head was spinning. 

 

 

Thomas Stone's house was having it's first major renovation so I didn't get to tour it

Onwards to visit Phx and her husband JAG.  They live on an old farmstead near Chaptico, MD which consists of about three buildings.  Chaptico used to be a thriving town, established in 1653, but the British burned it to the ground sometime along the way.  The farm used to be a tobacco farm back in the day and the old tobacco barns and tobacco stripping sheds are still there.  The house is a magnificent old house built in the late 1800s. 

 

Phx and JAG fed me some really strange and wonderful food that I had never had before.  As an appetizer it was Padrones.

 

These are small peppers (about 5 cm long), with a color ranging from bright green to yellowish green, and occasionally red. Their peculiarity lies on the fact that, while their taste is usually mild, a minority (10-25%) are particularly hot.

 

Deep fry in olive oil, when you take them out of the oil, they shrivel all up.  Add sea salt and then take your chances.  It is like playing Russian roulette - will I get a nice mild one or will the next one take your head off with the heat?

They made an old Scottish dish called Rumbledethump.  Boiled cabbage, onions, mashed potatoes and cheese all baked together.  The ultimate comfort food.

 

It was lovely catching up with the two of them and visiting their own personal Tieland

 

 

 

The house

 

Maryland Gothic

How they really are
It was a blast - thanks guys

 

Standard Washington

I upgraded my PC to Windows 10.  Seems they have a new version of Internet called Edge.  Seems like Edge is not compatible with my blog and it has taken me a little bit of time to make it all work.

Another day in the Capital. We not only have a nor'easter happening, we have a hurricane on the way. Coastal Flooding, Flash Flooding – my brand new weather radio is going nuts. At least I know it works. What this means is cold, windy and rain, rain, rain. Forecast is for tons of rain in the next couple of days. That is ok, I'm just going to slosh around – got my rain coat, nothing can stop me.

Getting to be an old hand at this public transportation thing. Got the bus, got on the green line subway, transferred to the orange line – I was rocking it.

First up is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This is one of two places in the US of A where all the money is printed. This place prints 800 million dollars a day. Inconceivable. I happened to be first in line to get on the tour. Almost immediately, about twenty orthodox Jews got in line behind me. Followed by some Asians, followed by some women in hajib. There were about forty people in line half of them kids. Quite a cross section of America.

First you watch a short film that explains the process and the security around the printing. Then you get to go in and actually watch the money getting printed. There is something so fascinating about assembly line machinery. It makes you just marvel at how resourceful humans are. If you have seen how newspapers are printed, some of the machines looked like that with sheets of money ripping through. Of course the tour ended up in the gift shop.

Back out into the rain and got myself on the Circulator. The Circulator is a bus that “circulates” around the mall and you can get off and on at various stops along the way. The Circulator is something that DC used to have but all the tour buses complained and they stopped. I lucked out because the Circulator just started up again six weeks ago and it only costs a dollar for two hours of circulating.

I used the Circulator to pick up some Monuments that I hadn't seen in all the trips to DC that I have done in the past.

 

The Jefferson Memorial. I had seen pictures of it, usually in the springtime with all the cherry trees around it. Today, while still majestic, it was a little dreary. I also visited the exhibits that are in the basement of the monument. They have a huge statue of Jefferson in the rotunda.

 

 

View of Washington from the steps - what a dreary day

Next stop was the Martin Luther King Memorial. On the side of the stone bearing MLK's likeness, there is a quote from the “I Have a Dream” speech - “Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope” which serves as the basis for the monument's design. There are fourteen other inspirational quotes along the back wall.

 

 

Onto the WWII memorial. I found this memorial rather moving. There are 56 granite pillars arranged in a semicircle around a plaza with two arches on opposite sides. One is labeled “Pacific”, the other “Atlantic” .

 

Today I seemed to have camera tiltitus

The pillars are all labeled with a state's name

 

 

On one side of the plaza is The Freedom Wall. The wall has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who died or were missing in the war. That would be a total of 404,800 lives lost – only the Civil War had a greater loss of life. Half a million people and that is just the American toll.

 

 

Crime and Punishment

Time to move on. I liked staying at Assateague, but the big city calls. It is on to the Headquarters of the Free World – Washington D.C. Well, perhaps that is overstating it a bit, but it was a nice turn of phrase. A pleasant drive – the road took me back into Delaware again and then into Maryland. I was on what they call the East Coast of Maryland which means I had to cross the Bay Bridge. This bridge is 4 ½ miles long – a twin span. It was huge and very old.

Picture from the web:

It seemed to go on forever

Washington DC is very urban, hence there are no really great choices as far as RV parks go in the area. That said, I am at an extremely expensive RV park ($58 after discounts) in College Park called Cherry Hill Park. It actually is rather an amazing place. They have 400 sites, it is huge. They make it very easy to get into D.C. A Metrobus comes right to the park which takes you to the subway which takes you into town. It takes about an hour travel time, but it is super convenient. This park also has a one mile nature trail which winds through the woods around the park. Great place to walk Miko. The cons are that it is right in the middle of several freeways, so there is a noise factor. Have you ever noticed that freeway noise is sort of like the crash of waves? It gets to be sort of a white noise after a while.

I bought a metro pass which allows me to take the bus and subway and headed into town. Most of the other people who left the park with me were heading to the Smithsonian museums or the Washington Mall. Not me. I had some really cool things planned.

First up was the Museum of Crime and Punishment. Today was it's last day of being open – they had lost their lease and were looking for a new place. When you first get started touring the museum, it starts of chronological – we are back in the Middle Ages and there are all sorts of exhibits of various torture devices. I must admit, at this point I was questioning my decision to go to this museum. As I went further into the museum, it became more and more fascinating.

 

Thumbscrews, Leg Irons, Head Cage (in case you needed to poke eyes out or something)

 

After the medieval exhibit, it started talking about crimes that happened in the colonial period of America. There was an understanding that if crimes were not punished severely enough, God would bring down all sorts of wrath.

 

 

After the colonial period, there was a section about pirates which talked, among other things, about how and why their various interpretations of the Jolly Roger flag was flown. There was also a section on women pirates who could be just as blood thirsty as their male counterpoints.

The exhibits proceeded on in chronological order, through prohibition with Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde. On to current day (or at least the last thirty/forty years) with Manson, Dahmer, Gacy.

 

Car used in the movie Bonnie and Clyde, complete with bullet holes

 

The museum was not all about crime – it was also about law enforcement – how law enforcement worked to keep crime in check. There were exhibits about various prisons( Sing Sing, Attica etc), different types of carrying out death penalties (electric chair, lethal injections) and there was a forensics lab where they had a mannequin laid out with different wounds, talking about how medical examiners would take a crime case and decode it.

 

Al Capone's Cell - quite a difference from everybody else's cell

 

The second museum was the International Spy Museum. When you entered this museum, you had to pick a prepared cover story and memorize it. Through out the whole exhibit, you would be asked questions and they would try to trip you up to break your cover.

This museum had all sorts of spy gadgets. I almost felt like I was in a Great Smart episode. There were all sorts of camera apparatus – shoe cameras, lapel cameras. We had huge exhibits of all the different types of bugs. There was an exhibit where you could put headphones on and listen to ongoing conversations happening in different parts of the museums. All sorts of exhibits – everything you needed to know to be a spy.

The special exhibition was about all the James Bond villains over the years. It made me want to got and watch every single James Bond movie (in order) again. They had lots of film clips and the parphenalia from the films. They also asked you to decide if some of the gadgets were fact or fiction.

The museums were very interactive – lots of buttons to push, lots of video to watch. Very enjoyable day.

Assateague National Seashore

Since I mentioned the parking lot RV park in Delaware Seashore State Park, here is a picture to show what it was like.

Delaware Shores State Park North Campground

Arrived in Assateague National Seashore. It was a long drive – 34 miles and maybe an hour on the road. I had to worry a bit about where I was going – Google Maps was taking me down all these back little roads, through all these little beach towns. It was much more interesting than driving on the highway, but it is a little worrisome when your really don't know where you are going.

I had had my eye on a campsite on the oceanside campground, but most of those are booked a year in advance. I drove through the bayside campground and found a wonderful site – A14. The view out my door is of the marsh and off in the distance is Chintoteague Bay. The spots are much further spaced out than in the oceanside campground. I am very happy with this spot.

Views out my side door:

Great Egret?

Smaller Egrets?  Maybe not so Great Egrets?

Assateague National Seashore is a barrier island that runs along the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Down on the south end of the island is Chincoteague where they have the annual pony swim across the bay. It is where the book “Misty” is based. I think just about every young girl read that book growing up. Chincoteague is down in the Virginia part of the island. I am located in the northern part, up in Maryland. They have their own wild ponies up here – 93 of them this year. They just wander where ever they want through the island.

 

 

This is my very first camping trip with no hookups whatever. I am obsessively checking my solar panel to see how charged the batteries are. It has been overcast for the last couple of days but the lowest my batteries got was 88% last night and I was able to run my lights. Even with it being overcast, today the batteries kept charging. This is fantastic – it is a whole new sense of freedom.

Speaking of overcast, I was pretty bummed out that the clouds were going to obscure the lunar eclipse last night. Magically, just before the eclipse started, the skies cleared and I was able to watch the whole majestic eclipse. When I was at McDonald Observatory in Texas last spring, I learned about the moon and also how much you can see with a pair of plain old binoculars. I pulled the binoculars out and had a front row seat along with billions of others. What a treat.

Something is wrong with my PC. It is making all sorts of whirring noises. I hope it lasts until I get home. Cheap piece of junk.

Miko and I went to the ocean again this morning. I have decided that I am not an ocean person. It is cool to see the waves crashing, play in the surf and listen to the sound, but I have to say, after about an hour, I'm ok with moving on. Give me a forest trail or a lovely meadow any day. Besides that, salt and sand get on everything.  You can be miles from the beach and still everything gets affected.  I guess I don't come from sea-faring stock.

 

These moving pieces of foam as they slide back into the ocean really freaked Miko out

 

Brought Miko back to the RV and then walked a couple of Nature Trails – Life in the Marsh and Life in the Forest. Miko was not allowed on the Nature Trails.

Life in the Marsh was this ½ mile boardwalk over the marsh with a few interpretive signs. When I was walking, the tide was in so you cold see the little fishes in among the grasses. I enjoyed the walk because it was a little bit different than what I'm used to.

 

The red plant is called Salicornia AKA Glasswort because they used to use it to make Soda Ash which is used to make glass.  It turns red in the fall.  Ranger said it was edible and we could pick it. 

 

 

Life in The Forest Trail was another ½ mile trail through a pine forest. These pines are a little bit different – they are used to salt spray. Found out that a carpet of pine needles is very slippery when they are on top of a boardwalk.

 

One last horse picture through my dirty windshield

 

I ended up going back to the Visitor Center because my first time through, I didn't have a chance to watch the movie. Imagine my joy when I found out they not only had one movie – they had two movies. The first one was all about the wild horses and how they manage the herd keeping them to 80 to 100 members. Parts of it were about hunting the horses to administer birth control to the mares– how difficult it was because the horses have learned exactly how far away they have to be to avoid the little dart that they shoot. Each mare is allowed to have one foal in its lifetime. The second movie was abot the culture and history of Assateague Island. Both interesting films. Now I feel I can check off Assateague Island off my list of National Sites I need to see.