Chincoteague Ponies Postcard

This spectacular postcard, showing Wild Ponies of Chincoteague is undated and unused.  It says- The famous Chincoteague Ponies swim from Assateague to Chincoteague Island annually where they are auctioned on the last Thursday in July.  The remaining ponies swim to freedom for another year by returning to Assateague Island.  This is the only Wild Pony Round-up and Swim on the East Coast and is witnessed by thousands of visitors each year.

Chincoteague Ponies August 2015

 Back in 2015 we went to see the famous Chincoteague Island ponies!

The Crime Buff's Guide to Outlaw Washington, DC by Ron Franscell

Oh, I have mentioned author Ron Franscell here before.  In fact, he is one of the few authors that I will buy his books, just because of the author.  He writes FASCINATING crime guides to specific places, and he gives addresses.

Well, I realized I had never read his "Crime Buff's Guide to Outlaw Washington, DC" yet!

These are just easy to read books.  Ron gives ya a brief description of the crime, he tells you where it happened and thats it.  You can google more about specific cases and you can googlemap the location.  His books are often a starting point to find out more about a case.

This particular volume covered a lot of ground.  The first/main section is on Washington DC.  There is another section on the Lincoln Assassination.  A third section covers Maryland and the last section is devoted to Arlington National Cemetery.

I enjoy reading about the Civil War, and I was glad to see multiple references to Dan Sickles.  Several recent crimes were covered in the book too.  Some really strange topics Franscell gets in to include Watergate, the Bunny Man legend, a stolen skull, and, one of my favorite characters in history, Robert Todd Lincoln (who is nearby during more presidential assassinations than just his dad's).

The book is packed and oozing with strange crime cases.  It gets my highest recommendation!

 

Antietam National Battlefield- Sharpsburg, Maryland

So, on this road trip, we had not planned on going to see the Antietam National Battlefield.  The way things were planned, it simply was not on our radar.

Then- a few plans got shuffled around, a couple things changed, and we realized that we would be able to swing by here and check another National Park AND Civil War Battlefield off of the checklist!

I have to admit though....  I was a little reluctant.  Before we visit a major historic site like this, I like to read up on it...  research it....  know exactly what happened there.  Obviously I wasn't able to do that before this unplanned visit.  Still, that is no reason to skip out on a park when an opportunity comes up!

We arrived at the visitor center and I talked to a ranger.  It was $10 to buy a pass to drive around the battlefield.  The rangers were friendly and helpful...  and they were doing a presentation starting a few minutes after we arrived, so we went to a ranger talk about the battle.


I did not catch this ranger's name, but he did a great talk about the battle.  AND I thought it was cool that he did his talk in a roomy glassed in area, looking out over the battlefield.  In many ways, you could take in most of the battle from this room.


After the ranger talk, we did a walk though the museum at the visitor center. 

After leaving the park's visitor center, we used the map we got from the park and did the driving tour, also listening to CDs provided by the B&B where we were staying, the Jackson Rose.

Check out my photos!

Random Thoughts on Friday

I am JUST settling down from a trip we took through West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania!  Whew!  We covered a lot of ground, and saw a lot of things!  This was my first time ever in Delaware.  That state is really a bit out of the way, and you really have to want to go there to be there.  To be honest, we just spent the night in Dover Delaware, and then moved on.  We did stay at a very nice Home 2 Suites in Dover, and we talked to a very nice lady there named Diane.
We had several goals on this trip, besides seeing Delaware for the first time. 

We wanted to spend some quality time in Gettysburg.  We were there several years ago, but we were there for only a few hours.

We wanted to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and go through the Delmarva area!  That was cool.

We also wanted to see some of the Presidents homes scattered through Pennsylvania and Virginia.  We got to tour 5!  More on that later.  We did make a last minute change on our trip- we were going to see Mt. Vernon, but we realized that we would have to deal with DC traffic.  It seemed like this might be a home to skip on this trip.  We ended up seeing ANOTHER Presidential home- the Woodrow Wilson House in the very attractive town of Staunton Virginia!  This was a good move, as we were able to do a couple of other fun things here (like seeing a replica of the Shakespeare Blackfriar's Theatre!).

Forgotten Historic Sites and the War of 1812

Check out the link to a great article by Lara Lutz.

http://starspangledtrail.net/blog/post/war-of-1812s-ghost-battlefields#.U_sltEzD99C

Lara has written a very interesting article on sites relating to the War of 1812.  She takes a tour of a specific battle area that is not exactly well preserved.  It is still there and all, but the markers are obstructed..... and there is a Wal-Mart.

It sounds like efforts are being made to improve the sites, and there are folks around trying to preserve and remember what they can.

In my travels, I have found similarly hidden and forgotten sites.  As someone who likes to have a small souvenir of a visit to a historic place, I might make a visit to the Wal-Mart part of the trip.  A receipt, or a candy bar wrapper might be in my scrap book next to a postcard or magazine article about the place.  I have visited several historic and interesting locations where a mall, a post office and a general store now stand.  I am sure there are more that I can't think of right now.

Baltimore Ghosts by Ed Okonowicz

I was looking for a good book about odd attractions in Baltimore before my Baltimore trip. To be perfectly honest, I have been staying away from books with words like "haunted" or "ghost" in the title recently. I love a good ghost story, but many books of this nature are pretty bland. Anyone can put a book together about ghosts and make up the the content. Not a whole lot of fact checking goes on with many of those books.

Well, I read up some on "Baltimore Ghosts" by Ed Okonowicz and it looked a bit more fact based than others. I decided to go ahead and pick it up!

This book has some interesting facts about the sites, and it is a good reference for people like me who like to just go check out weird places.

Okonowicz does a great job of interviewing people closely tied with the sites he mentions. He interviews tour guides, rangers and managers of sites relating to Edgar Allan Poe, Fort McHenry and other strange locations. Many sections include an "interesting facts" section.

The author obviously puts a lot more work in to this book than many authors of "ghost books" do. He doesn't give babbling stories of his own ghost hunting. He interviews people and gives facts. I tip my hat to Ed Okonowicz.

Bertha's- Fell's Point, MD

I mentioned Bertha's earleir and I wanted to put a seperate post up about it.

We were told this was the local place we had to visit.

I was also told this was a great seafood place to hit too, but we weren't in the mood for seafood.

MANY friends have already complained about the fact that we were in the area and didn't eat a lot of seafood, but we really aren't seafood people.  I did have a nice crabcake on this trip, but one was enough.

So, at Bertha's we ordered an egg and a reuben.  I had the sandwich and it was great!  Like, REALLY great.  The egg was good too, and we were just really glad we went there.

I think it says a lot for a place when you go there and you order something from the menu that the place is not known for and you still like it.

Bertha's is known for their mussel's and we were given several bumper stickers on the way out that suggested, "Eat Bertha's Mussels".  I am trying to think of an appropriate place to put my bumper sticker.

It looks like the restuarant has been there since the 70s and I can see why.


http://www.berthas.com/

World Trade Center- Baltimore, MD

USS Constellation- Baltimore, MD

Water Taxi- Baltimore, MD

On our recent trip to Baltimore we spent a day using their Water Taxi service!

I think it was about $12 each to ride, and we were really happy with this!  You can catch rides to several of the trendy neighborhoods and to Fort McHenry national park!

The taxis came by very frequently, and we really didn't have to wait long for the next one.

In fact, we got on a couple of times just to enjoy making the rounds and seeing the sites.

Fell's Point, MD

We took the water taxi to Fell's Point, a small artsy neighborhood in Baltimore.

The place is very cool, and we had a great time there.  They have a really nice indy music shop, a fair trade store, and cool jewelry shop that we enjoyed.  Oh, and we really liked the coffee shop, the Daily Grind.  Nice, cozy place.

I did quickly notice some cool Grateful Dead connections in this town!  Has anyone else noticed that a few businesses share the names of Grateful Dead songs?

We were looking over a map of places to stop for lunch when we noticed a place called the WHARF RAT!!!!  Then, we saw BERTHA'S!  Bertha and Wharf Rat are two of my all time favorites by the Dead.

At the advice of a local we went with Bertha's (see my separate entry on that great restaurant).

There were a couple of other things in town that made me remember my time at Dead, Rat Dog, and Robert Hunter shows.