High Flying Flags and Airplanes and Slow Moving Traffic

I thought today would be a semi-down day but boy was I wrong.  We went to Baltimore to see Fort McHenry.  In all the times we have visited Washington D.C. we have never been to Fort McHenry.  It is a very neat place.

The streets near Ft. McHenry are very interesting.  The homes are built together very close to the streets.  I am sure the building are very old and it probably costs a fortune to rent or own even one.

It was at Fort McHenry that Francis Scott Key wrote the words to the Star Spangled Banner.  He was on a British ship in the harbor.  The British had just burned down Washington and the White House and were hoping to deal the death blow to our young American country by taking Baltimore.  However they didn't count on a determined military stationed at Fort McHenry.  After 25 hours of bombing Fort McHenry, the British gave up and left the harbor.  The Americans had held strong.  The morning after the battle, Key looked across the water and was so glad to see the American flag still flying.

Ft. McHenry is only one of a few sites that fly the flag 24-hours a day.  Each morning a new flag is raised over the fort,  The ranger plays a "call to order" on the fife which is what has been done daily since Ft. MeHenry was a fort.

Papaw and Hunter along with lots of other people help hold the flag in preparation for the raising.

This is the 15 stripe, 15 star  flag  like the one flying since Ft. McHenry was a military fort.

The brick of the barracks is the original from the 1800's.

The is the sally point or entry point to the fort.

There were several small prison rooms.  

One of several large cannons.  Some of the cannons like this one had wheels that moved on rails so they could be turned.

After visiting Ft. McHenry, we returned to camp to eat lunch before heading out to the opposite end of Washington D.C. to see the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.  This is the newest museum and isn't located on the mall of downtown Washington D.C.  One things you can do at the museum is go up into control tower and watch planes take off and land at Dulles International Airport.  

There were so many airplanes on display but this is the one that Hunter and Papaw liked the best.  It is the SR71 Blackbird.  It was a stealth spy plane first used in the 1960's.  Hunter really liked it because a transformer movie was filmed here at the museum using this plane as a transformer.    

Another neat display was the Discovery Space Shuttle.  

This is the airplane "Enola Gay" that dropped the first bomb on Japan in WWII.

Air France Concorde - the largest passenger plane.

Another look at the space shuttle.

The beautiful entrance/exit of the Air Museum.


We left the museum a little after five o'clock and it took us nearly 2 hours to get back to the camp.  The traffic was horrible. There were at most times 3-5 lanes of traffic each direction creeping along the highways.  I looked at the cars and couldn't believe the rear bumpers weren't all bashed in from accidents.  We would not want to have to drive in this every day.  What was so amazing was the fact that you could be creeping and then all of a sudden, the traffic would begin moving for a block or so and then, creep again.  I was so proud of Carol and the way he handled the stress of cars zipping in and out of traffic around us but he remained calm.  This traffic is the reason we will be taking the Metro into Washington D.C. for the next three days.  We will drive to the New Carrollton Metro Station, park our car, and let the Metro get us from place to place.

This turned out to be a busy day and our feet did complain a bit.  I don't think the next three days look any easier.