July 2004

The summer of 2004 was filled with a series of day trips and visits on land (my son from SC visited twice, my mother had her 95th birthday, I had some dental surgery and we went to my husband's aunt's funeral), but we also made time for two short Gunkholing trips on our boat.

Gunkholing

is a boating term referring to a type of cruising in shallow or shoal water, meandering from place to place, spending the nights in coves. The Chesapeake is perfect for this. We have the textbook on this type of cruising Cruising the Chesapeake: A Gunkholer's Guide,by William H. Shellenberger. Technically Gunkholing refers to anchoring in quiet coves, but since my husband's Heart Attack at Shroud Key two years ago when he was pulling the anchor, I have preferred to go to marinas and eat in restaurants. Those part of the first trip and all of the second trip are in the second section.

So this section will be a series of photos interspersed with some text to tell the story of our trips and visits in the summer of 2004
We got back from my 45th college reunion on May 31. From here the first section of the schedule (up to August 1st where I had to split the narrative because it was too long) was:
June 8 - trip to the dental surgeon in Baltimore
June 16 - return trip to the dentist
July 1 - Sons visit and a day trip on the boat
July 7 - Son's return and a local visit
July 13 - Dental visit
July 30 - Mother's 95th birthday
August 6 - start of the first Gunkholing trip

June 2004

University of Maryland

I was making periodic trips up to the University of Maryland Dental School because the students doing the periodontal work there didn't charge as much and there were really no dentists down in the country close where I lived that could to the work.

Hayden-Harris Hall

The building that I went to was Hayden-Harris Hall, which was built in the 70s.
At the time, they were in the process of building a new Dental School building

Construction near the Un of MD Dental School

As I walked to my dental appointment, I saw this sign. It was beside the current University of Maryland Dental School.

It says:

FIRST DENTAL COLLEGE

"Baltimore College of dental surgery, first dental college in the world chartered by the General Assembly of Maryland March 6, 1840. Founders were Horace H. Hayden, M.D. D.D.S. and Chapin A. Harris, M.D. D.D.S. The Assembly stipulated by Act of Consolidation April 9, 1924, that the name of the college "shall be preserved as a definite department of the University of Maryland". ..
After the dental appointments this gave me a chance to go visit my mother

who turned 95 at the end of July. Normally we would go to lunch at her favorite restaurant which was The Crack Pot

It is really spelled that way

Crack Pot restaurant

where she would quite often have cream of crab soup.

menu

Then we would have dinner on the way home. A different place each time. The round trip was about 200 miles.

On the Boarder (a Mexican chain)

Maynards

Bob's comment was that it was trying to be like "Cheers". I do not remember what we had to eat.

After a trip to the dentist, we stopped off here on the way to visit my mom.

Gunnings Crab House

According to their website, Gunnings in this location started in 1969, when Andrew E. Gunning, opened a hole-in-the-wall stag bar in South Baltimore. Offering only beer and shots of whiskey it became a favorite place for the blue collar workers of the Brooklyn neighborhood. It still had this atmosphere. In 1970, Gunning’s son, Edward, a Baltimore policeman, decide it might be nice to offer the regulars something to munch on while they drank. He brought in five bushels of Baltimore traditional steamed Chesapeake Bay Blue crabs, and laid them out for nine dollars a dozen. Gunning’s Bar became “a Baltimore ‘Hon’ Crab House.” Gunnings sold their city location and migrated south to Hanover.

Inside Gunnings

This is a local place with tables inside and outside and a sign outside warning of the attack crab.

Beware of Attack Crab

I had soup, and we both had sandwiches. We shared and ENORMOUS eclair (Bob loves eclairs). The bill for lunch was $25.26 including tax, but before the tip was added. Unfortunately now even the location in Hanover is now closed.

I was also having a very frustrating discussion with the camera people. My original digital camera was a Toshiba, which I bought in 2000. But in the fall of 2002, the On-Off switch twisted off in my hand, and I replaced the PDRM5 with another Toshiba - the PDRM81. Which I HATED. It ate batteries. And it had a hair in it someplace that appeared on all my photos that had a light sky or light area at the top.

Since most of my photos were taken from the boat, most of them had a large area of sky at the top and they all had this hair in them that I had to edit out. I could not see where it was on the camera. I tried every way I could think of to clean it off to no avail. So I sent the camera back to them, and they said it was fixed and sent it back. But the hair was still there. After two or three times back and forth, I finally had to get them on the phone and talk to them while I emailed them a photo with the hair in it so they could see what I was talking about. At that point they did find the hair which was inside the camera and fix it. But the camera still ate batteries. So I gave it to my husband to use and bought a Kodak DX6490. Which was much better on batteries, but I hated the software that came with it.

July 2004

My sister and I usually took my mom somewhere for dinner to celebrate her birthday which was on the 30th of the month.
-In 1998, my sister and I took her to Annapolis and stayed a weekend in a hotel overlooking the harbor.
-For her 90th birthday (1999), my three girls and their children took her to Chuckie Cheese. Then the next day, my sister and I had a surprise birthday party with 40 people which was in Towson. It took us over a year to arrange this party so that everyone would be in town and it would be a surprise.
-For her birthday in 2000 (age 91), my sister and I went down to the harbor and took the water taxi around and then had dinner down there.
-In 2001, we went to a restaurant in Roland Park.
-In 2002, we ate at the Renaissance Harborplace overlooking Baltimore Harbor with the son of my mother's first cousin who was visiting from Japan.
-In 2003 we had a celebration out on her deck (in Towson)

For her 95th birthday (2004), we again tried to arrange a big party, but it was too difficult to coordinate, so the various family members visited her during the summer. Starting at the beginning of July

(She died three months before her 2006 birthday when she would have been 97)

2004, July 1

My son and his family came up from South Carolina and since my daughter-in-law and granddaughter had not been out on the boat, we took a trip across the Potomac for lunch at Coles Point Plantation.

Leaving our marina

in the aft cabin

Ragged Point light

Coles Point is between Stratford Hall and Port Kinsale at Ragged Point light in the northern neck of Virginia. Hague is the nearest town.

Breakwater outside the marina

Coming into the marina channel

Covered slips, and fuel dock in the marina

This restaurant said we could tie up for lunch free at their dock (which was the gas dock). The other restaurant within a half day's sailing range (Port Kinsale) was not open for lunch. .

RosalieAnn at the restaurant dock

Getting off the boat in the marina

While the website says the name of the restaurant is Blackbeards, the name on the menu was Pilot's Wharf.They were having a large party (ladies in red dresses and purple hats) so we ate in the back room not overlooking the dock.

Granddaughter and Bob looking at the menu

My son and I had the Sunrise prime rib (or sirloin) sandwich for $6.99. We had a choice of fries, cole slaw, or potato salad as a side. I had the potato salad and my son had the fries. Each sandwich came with a big dill pickle. The meat was a trifle fatty, but it was a big sandwich and quite enough to eat.My DIL and Bob (my husband at the end of the table) had the Dockmaster crab cake sandwich for $7.99, and the grandkids shared a cheese burger and fries for $5.99.

sailing back across the Potomac

Maryland shore

We had lunch at the restaurant and then we motored back across to Maryland to our home marina

Camping trailers at Courtney's

Schieble's head boat Miss Ocean City as we approach our home marina

Then we all had a swim at the pool in the marina.

Then my son and his family went up to Baltimore to visit my mother for a week.

son's family leaving

July 7, 2004

My son came back to Leonardtown on their way home and we had a whole day of local sightseeing,
In the morning we went to the Patuxent Air Museum

PAX NAVAL AIR (in the picnic table

Ceder Point Lighthouse model

The Cedar Point Light originally located on a tiny island off Cedar Point at the southern entrance to Patuxent River was built in 1896. It sat on 1.54 acres with a three-story brick and cedar-shingle house crowned by a 50-foot tower housing lens and fog bell tower, oil house, boathouse, outhouse and barn. A radar reflector now stands in place of the century-old crumbling lighthouse. Cedar Point Light was made inactive in 1928 and was on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List. In 1957 the bell tower collapsed during a storm. The Navy removed the cupola in 1981. The lighthouse was finally demolished in 1996. Portions of the keeper's house were donated to the Calvert Marine Museum.

Ejection Seats

My husband went to Test Pilot School at Pax River. This is one of two air stations in the US armed forces that have TPSs. The museum is about research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) of Naval Aircraft. It is one of only 11 Naval museums in the country that is chartered by the Secretary of the Navy. The old museum closed in 2001 to allow road widening, so when we went in 2004 it was in a temporary location. The temporary museum is a large siding-clad structure with a nearby aircraft viewing area. It is offset from the main road. It is 50% bigger than the old museum.

Son and granddaughter

The museum offers hands-on displays, a wide-screen video presentation, full-scale aircraft and a flight trainer to help educate visitors about the process of testing military flight equipment. There is a model collection, the portable helicopter, the rubber airplane, a display about G-forces, the development of the ejection seat (the kids could pose in it), the story of the helmet, etc.

Surface effect ship model

Sitting in the seat of a jet

Grandson in a cockpit

Wind tunnel models

Model collection behind Bob

Individual airplane

The outdoor collection had 17 naval aircraft, including the F-18 Hornet, the F-14 Tomcat, the Harrier II, the Sea Stallion helicopter, and the S-2 Tracker. He flew various planes but spent most of his time in the S-2. Others on display are the A-4 Skyhawk, and the F-4 Phantom II.

Through the fence

Everyone in the plane shade

Airplane of LtCOL Bob Newsom USMC

Bob in front of a jet

Tow motor

S2F - Plane Bob flew

S2F

Willy Fudd airborne early warning aircraft with the wings folded

Son's family

Granddaughter under the wing

Helicopters

Huey

Waiting for a lunch table

getting gas

In the afternoon we went to the Maritime Museum at Solomons Island (across the Patuxent from us) including climbing the lighthouse

Solomons from the bridge over the Patuxent River

This is a wonderful museum. It includes exhibits on the maritime Patuxent River such as the restored Drum Point Lighthouse, local fossils including Calvert Cliffs, estuarine biology of the area, demonstrations on oyster tonging, marsh walks, small craft handling, a discovery room for children, an aquarium which includes otters, wood carving and model building, and a chance to have a ride on a bugeye or other types of boats.

Bob and son's family walking toward the museum

At the entrance were the fiberglass seahorses which Calvert County has chosen as their symbol. St. Mary's where we live has the blue heron.

Seahorse painted by Calvert County children

This one is painted with various Maryland and Solomons Island icons (What shows on this side is sharks teeth, lighthouse, jellyfish, Maryland flag, a ray, and a Baltimore Oriole - the bird). The US flag is on the other side. This sculpture is titled "Horsin' Around in Maryland" and it was designed by the students at Dowell Elementary.

Granddaughter by "Beach" seahorse

The island was formerly known as Bourne's Island (about 1680), Somervell's Island (1740-1814) and Sandy Island (1827-1865). It became known as Solomons Island (1867) because Isaac Solomon moved from Baltimore to the island, later named for him, to be closer to the big oyster reefs in the Chesapeake. He had developed a process for canning oysters. He shipped them as well. Solomon's Island is on the north side of the Patuxent. It has nothing to do with either Salmon or the Solomons Islands in the Pacific. At one time at least 550 feet separated the island from the mainland. The first causeway connecting the island to the mainland was built in 1870. Today the causeway is only 23 feet long.

The Calvert Cliffs area is rich in fossil sharks teeth so some exhibits highlight this

Recreation of Calvert Cliffs fossil fields

The Paleo hall at the Calvert Marine Museum features fossils from the Miocene age -- ten to twenty million years ago -- when sea levels were higher and the ocean covered this region. A replica of a section of the famous Calvert Cliffs is used to explain local geology. This section shows the layers with fossils in them.

Looking for sharks teeth in the children's section

Son's children in front of prehistoric shark jaw

Drawer of things to try magnifying

There is also a section on the history of the marine industry in this area

Sail and Riggers loft exhibit

The sign says: "Rigging is the system of tackle, lines and stays which support and control a vessel's masts and sails. The rigger was the person who fitted the rigging and often shared the loft with the sailmaker - sailmakers also needed a large unobstructed workspace.

Blacksmith shop

Shop diorama

The Colonial Connection

Machinery exhibit

Diorama of the island

And there is an aquarium section

Aquarium

Seahorse tank

Seahorses

Aquarium with fishes labeled

Docent showing kids about horseshoe crab

which extends outside to the otter tank

Otter

Otter swimming on his back

And a boardwalk through the marsh

Marsh walk

Snake in the wetlands

Fiddler Crabs on the mud flats

Fiddler Crabs

In order to get from the boardwalk into the swamp over to the lighthouse, you have to walk along by the small craft building. This 6,000-square foot building, open toward the boat basin, houses nineteen of the small craft in the museum's collections, ranging in size from a dugout canoe to the forty-five-foot drake-tail Penguin. Next to the Small Boat Shed is the Small Craft Guild building. Here a group of boat enthusiasts works on selected weekday and Saturday mornings building, restoring, sailing, and rowing traditional craft indigenous to the region, all under the direction of the museum's boatwright.

Small craft shed

boat shed

Drum Point Light was originally out in the Bay at Drum Point. It is a screwpile, cottage-type light. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were forty-five of these screwpile lighthouses that served the Chesapeake Bay because they were less expensive to build than other types of lighthouses.

Drum Point reflected

Earliest known photo from 1907

Drum Point Lighthouse

Originally the keeper would have come and gone by boat. The keeper would have accessed his home by climbing a ladder on the outside rail. For the purposes of 'civilian' access, you now get into the lighthouse by going up through a hatch in the floor.

My son going up through the hatch

Each room in the lighthouse has been painstakingly re-created under the direction of Anna Weems Walt who was born and resided in the lighthouse. The furniture was based on her memory and she even donated some family china to top off her efforts.

Lighthouse keeper's quarters

Part of kitchen

Kitchen stove

Interior stairs from underneath

While the underpinnings have been modified somewhat to be safer for visitors, I don't think the interior has been modified at all. You can't pass on the stairs.

Bed in lighthouse

Automatic bell ringer (for fog)

Sanitary facilities (on the rail over the water)

Railing outhouse

Bob, grandson and daughter-in-law on the lighthouse platform

There is an anchorage near the lighthouse

Anchorage from lighthouse at museum

and there is a dinghy dock

Solomon's museum dinghy dock

Wm. B. Tennison from the lighthouse

Wm. B. Tennison is a nine-log sailing bugeye hull converted to powered buy-boat, official number 081674. Tennison was built in 1899 by master carpenter Frank Laird of Monie, Maryland, at Crabb Island (now abandoned) near Oriole, Somerset County, Maryland, on a tributary of the Manokin River off Tangier Sound. Tennison was built for Benjamin P. and Rufus L. Miles of Monie, Maryland, who used her as a bugeye oyster dredge boat until 1908-9 when she was converted to power. The date of 1899 was a late one for the construction of a "chunk" or log hull bugeye. By this time logs were becoming scare and the bugeye was beginning to be replaced by the smaller, easier to operate, and cheaper to build skipjack. This late construction date in part explains Tennison's survival. Of the hundreds of sailing bugeyes dredging in the 1880s, less than 50 survived to 1938.

Door of waterman's shed

This shed is on the boardwalk trail outside the museum southeast of the lighthouse. I took this picture because of the texture of the wood and also so I could read the sign. The sign says:
"Waterman's Shed: "This shed was built ca 1900 at Otter Point, Patuxent River. Orne Laveille lived in this shed during the oyster season, from which he oystered on the Patuxent River. The shed was moved by barge around 1910 to Tongue Cove. Heillen Creek by the Tongue family and used by Tongue and Ballard families until 1984 when the shed was donated to the museum who moved it to its present location."

Sign as we left the museum "Thank you for visiting"

July 13, 2004

I had another dental appointment. Bob drove me up and I took some photos from the top of the parking garage

Lexington Market parking garage

Central Market Post Office

church steeples

church where Poe's Grave is located

And then my sister and brother-in-law met Bob and me at my mother's house

my mother's cat

my mother with her cat

my mother's photo of my sister and me with our spouses

with my painting of my dad behind us

July 30, 2004

On her birthday, I drove up to town, and took her to lunch at Gertrudes at the Baltimore Museum of Art. When I was a child, my mom brought me down here for art lessons. I must have been young, but I remember the teacher trying to tell me how to do trees so they weren't big blobs, but that I still didn't have to do each leaf. I'm still not too good with foliage. My first oil painting, the instructor did the tree leaves for me.

Since Charles Street is mostly one way north, I don't get to see this museum much as when I travel through Baltimore. I usually go south on St. Paul Street, and north on Calvert. But if you can get onto the short section of Charles that goes south past Hopkins, you will come to Museum Drive on the right. If you take Museum Drive, it will bring you right out in front of the museum which has twin lions flanking the steps, and I remember Rodin's Thinker in the front.. I understand this statue is now in the forecourt and isn't outside anymore.

Stone Lions and flowers in the entrance

Museum entrance

Mom looking at a glass exhibit

Gertrude's is a very fancy restaurant, and reservations are recommended. We had a reservation for 12:30 and arrived early (about 12:10). (A couple without a reservation was seated before us even though we arrived at the same time which offended me. I don't know if it was because they were a man and woman, and we were two women or what.) They were having a BSO luncheon party and by 12:30 the place was filled and people were having to wait to be seated.

The real big problem is the noise. The restaurant was full, and it was REALLY too noisy to talk. It might have been because the luncheon party was mostly women and they were at a long table so had to talk loudly. Maybe it was quieter outside, but it was too hot and humid for us to sit out there.

Inside Gertrudes

Mom at Gertrudes

cream of crab soup ($4.95)

My mom had the turkey club on toast (called the Hutzler's Tea Room Club) for $7.50, which came with regular potato chips (which she doesn't eat although she snitched some of my fries), and she had cream of crab soup ($4.95) which she said she could taste the sherry in. We each got a big dill pickle (which neither of us ate since we don't like them). She took half of her sandwich home.

Toasted cheese and tomato sandwich at Gertrudes

I had a $7.95 soup and sandwich. The soup was the special which was corn and shrimp. The sandwich was toasted cheese and tomato. It came with very good fries which I tried not to eat too many of. We both got dessert, and were both really too full to do justice to it. Mom had a chocolate Mudd cake ($5.00), and I had a praline thing called Nougatine Glace for $6.00.

Nougatine Glace for $6.00.

I was also tempted by the special which was Peach Cobbler. We both drank water. The total with tax before the tip was $32.97

Gift Shop

After lunch, mom and I browsed a bit in the gift shop.

Mother looking at the flowers at the entrance

Mom going back to the car

She drove back to her house so I took some photos. We passed Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins - Homewood campus

In the 1940s, Charles Street was one way going south. Then in 1953, a "swaggering, self-taught traffic engineer named Henry A. Barnes" came to Baltimore and changed the traffic flow. In his 1965 autobiography, "The Man With the Red and Green Eyes" he reported that on traffic hearings on the plan to reverse Charles Street, "one female citizen . . . came dripping in mink and exuding all the old airs of historic Baltimore. . . . 'You just don't understand, Mr. Barnes,' she said. 'You're a newcomer here. We have traditions in Baltimore. . . . If you reverse the direction of the street, you're making it easy for the people of South Baltimore to use Charles . . . and they will.'" I remember Barnes (I was in HS then). Most of what he did made a lot of sense to me. I had a Pittsburgh college friend who came to live in Baltimore. She could not get over how easy Baltimore was to drive in compared to Pittsburgh (and I have to say also compared to D.C. or Boston). One of the things Barnes did was move a lot of monuments out of the middle of streets.

Hopkins statue

From a Baltimore City Paper article by Tom Chalkley in 2001:
"He considered Baltimore's fondness for monuments a monument to municipal insanity: "Next to crab cakes, [monuments] were the citizens' second greatest passion. It didn't matter if the monument was an eyesore, if it was erected to someone who had long since been forgotten, or if it was a menace to their own lives and property." The "worst of these dillies," he wrote, "was the pedestal honoring Johns Hopkins, which sat in the middle of Charles near Johns Hopkins University. Nicknamed "The Birthday Cake," the Hopkins shaft had caused a number of fatalities prior to Barnes' arrival. Defying his critics, he moved it to its present-day niche at Charles and 33rd Street, where, Barnes wrote, "the sports fan could view it in awe and admiration . . . after the Orioles had lost to the visiting team.""

First English Lutheran Church

She told me that this building was Baltimore's first condo

Arthur E Davis III building

and also some going through town on the way back to Leonardtown

Baltimore architecture

From the car - St. Paul Street

Maryland Science Center

Kids on the Duck