"O Say Can You See"

Monday we left Philadelphia for D.C. I was most excited about driving through Delaware so I could cross another state off my list. I’ve now been to 35 of the 50 states and expect to hit 3 more this year: California, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Granted we were only in Delaware for less than 20 miles but it was still worth it. When I was driving through I was thinking about how crazy it is that some Eastern states are smaller than most counties in Western States. I was disappointed in Delaware however because I wanted to stop at a Hampton Inn for a key card but when I showed up at the address, it didn’t exist! Instead a Holiday Inn was there. I collect the Hampton key cards because they say “Welcome to [STATE]”. I started this tradition on the GAT and I would grab one key card for myself and send one back to the coworkers at the Hampton in Denver so they could display them behind the front desk. Oh well, guess I’ll just have to find some reason to go back to Delaware in the future. Did you know it’s the only state in the U.S. without a National Park Service site? Doesn’t our first state deserve some sort of recognition from the NPS!? Anyway, on to Maryland!We continued on into Baltimore where we went to Fort McHenry.

This was the birthplace of our National Anthem. Jess and I were walking around the visitor center when she asked a lady if she would mind taking our picture. The lady agreed so we turned around and stood next to each other when the lady suggests “don’t you want to act like you know each other?” We started cracking up because in many of our pictures, it always looks like we both just happened to end up in the same place at the same time. We tried her suggestion and it ended up looking like I am trying to abduct Jess.

While we were walking around learning about how the National Anthem came to be, a short informative film started so we sat down to watch it. At the end of the film, the Star Spangled Banner started playing and everyone stood up and started singing while the shades on the window rolled up and we were greeted with the site of the American flag flying high over the Fort. It was so emotional! If you want to learn much more about the story of the National Anthem, check out Jess’ dissertation: http://adventureswithjessica.blogspot.com/2011/04/fort-mchenry.html

We decided not to pay the $7 entrance fee into the Fort and instead walked around the outer path along the water. At the end of the path, we came across a random statue of Orpheus. I had no idea who he was but he definitely left an impression on me. He was definitely the most…blatant statue I have ever seen at a NPS site. He only had a very strategically placed fig leaf!

We made our way down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway on the way to D.C. Interestingly, some of the exit ramps on the Parkway are heavily marked “Employees Only” for various government agencies. We were both wondering what would happen if someone accidently exited on one of those ramps (but not crazy enough to try and find out).