Fort McHenry

Our last day of vacation was spent driving. We had stopped the night before in NJ, and we still had a long way down Interstate 95 to go. I had told Hubby if we were at a good time to break when we passed Fort McHenry in Baltimore I would like to stop. Well, it was perfect timing for a stretch and some lunch, so we stopped off.

 They have a great exhibit about patriotism, our flag's history, and wars we have been involved in. Fort McHenry is where an important battle took place during the War of 1812, and was also the place where Francis Scott Key watched the battle and looked for our flag. When the smoke cleared he saw our banner waving high and quickly wrote down his famous poem. It is now our National Anthem.

 Inside the visitor's center there is a short film explaining what the battle was about and what Key would have seen. At the end of the film, the screen rises and you see the flag, pictured above, flying high in the breeze. The Star Spangled Banner is playing at the same time, and I have to say my eyes were quite wet. I am a patriotic fool. I will cry nearly every time I hear that song!

 Then we quickly toured the fort- very quickly since we were so excited to get back on I-95!- and stretched a little more. There are some cannonballs in the courtyard and a cannon that could have fired them. This is #2's thumb in the plug hole of the cannonball. Imagine how much black powder that could hold! No wonder such a battle made Key wax poetic.

And then we finished driving. It was a good vacation, but home is always a pleasant end to travels, and it was this time as well. I enjoyed reading 4 books (finishing the trilogy of The Giver by Lois Lowry with Messenger and Gathering Blue, a great true story called Same Kind of Different As Me, and a book I picked up one year at a library sale called Never Cry Wolf which turned out to be a great environmental and moral book), spent time relaxing with Hubby, hiking with the kids, seeing sites, and being away from it all.