Oh say can you see...

We had a wonderful couple of days in Baltimore. On our way up the Patapsco River we passed a red, white and blue buoy the National Park Service puts in the water to mark the spot where they think Francis Scott Key was when he saw "by the dawn's early light...that our flag was still there." The next day we went to Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner flag was flying during the War of 1812. They have a 13 star replica of the flag that they fly today if the weather conditions are right. The flag is so big that it needs at least 5 knots of wind to move, but more that 12 knots of wind puts too much strain on the flag pole so they have to replace it with a smaller flag. We got lucky, the conditions were right and they were flying the replica flag.

We also went to the National Aquarium, which I recommend but not on a hot Saturday afternoon in the summer. It was crowded. They allegedly control the crowds by selling timed entrance tickets, but the Aquarium's thoughts on how many people are appropriate and my thoughts on the same subject vary widely.

On Sunday friends of ours from Marathon, Andy and Dinata Misovec, stopped by for lunch. They were in Baltimore for a wedding, then they are heading off to by campground monitors in the Smokey Mountain National Park for the summer. Much better than sittingg in Marathon wondering which will get you first -- the oil or a hurricane.

Monday we headed off up a nice flat, calm Chesapeake Bay headed for Chesapeake City on the C&D Canal. The C&D Canal is a 12 mile man-made canal that connects the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays and cuts nearly 300 miles off of the sea route from Philadelphia to Balitmore. It was first proposed in 1661, was started in 1788 and finished in 1829. Today it is used by commercial shipping, military vessels and pleasure craft. The picture is of the ship coming out of the Canal cas we were trying to enter it.

Chesapeake City is a little town on the Chesapeake end of the canal that encourages pleasure craft stopping by offering free dockage at a city dock. Fortunately, for a fee, you can also use the City's power, since it was 90+ degrees and 90%+ humidity. In Chesapeake City we met up with Lee O'Brien, a former client, for drinks and dinner.