I Did Not Get To Help Raise the Big Flag at Fort McHenry

It was still fun, though!

Because, as everyone knows, my entire purpose in life now is to collect national park passport stamps, I convinced my partner that the best way to get to the kid's college to pick her up for summer vacation was through Baltimore.

It's obviously not, but my wish for you is that you also find a life partner who deems it easier to support your delusions than to argue with you.

And not only did I convince him that we should detour through Baltimore, but I ALSO convinced him that we should do so a day early and spend the night there so that I could get to Fort McHenry National Monument when it opened and therefore be in no danger of accidentally missing the raising of the giant historic flag.

Because. You guys. If you're there for the raising of the giant historic flag, YOU GET TO HELP RAISE THE GIANT HISTORIC FLAG.

Enough said, right? Obviously this opportunity is worth any amount of effort.

The grounds around the fort are beautiful and free to roam, and combined with the free parking I imagine they're an awesome place to hang out all year. Here's the entrance to the paid area, with the small overnight flag still flying:

The admission to the fort is a horrifying FIFTEEN DOLLARS PER PERSON (?!?!?!), buuuuuttttt if you buy an $80 America the Beautiful pass it covers all entrance fees for you plus three people or your entire personal car-load for 12-ish months. 

I bought the pass, and it'll have paid for itself by the end of July. 

I'm sorry to tell you that also at the flag-raising was a giant group of MAGA schoolchildren, and I know this because many of them were wearing MAGA hats. Why on earth you would dress an innocent child in a MAGA hat I do not know; it's so gross to put a hate-filled agenda physically on a child and just expose them to the judgment of the general population like that. It's the same kind of people who also put their children in front of Planned Parenthood clinics holding forced-birth signage. Everyone knows that kids don't have the critical thinking skills to properly put themselves in positions like that; it's the parents who want their kids to grow up to be fascists who do things like that TO them.

I'm also sorry to tell you that it was too windy for the big flag. Instead, we raised the small flag, sob.

However, the bright spot of the day is that separately, there was ALSO a children's choir visiting Fort McHenry that morning, on the same kind of "visit Washington, DC, and its nearby educational sites" trip as the MAGA children's group. I actually saw these kids gathering as we were pulling into the parking lot and thanks to their aura of general productivity--busy sunscreening themselves and putting on their hats and their little backpacks--I was all, "Oh, look! A Girl Scout troop!"

I wasn't far off, lol!

When the park ranger running the flag raising heard that they were a children's choir, she invited them to sing the National Anthem during the raising. They agreed, and now, thanks to them, I have a very sweet national park memory:

Although I'd rather have a memory of the children's choir singing while I helped raise the BIG flag, humph.

The fort itself is interesting to walk around, with small exhibits inside many of the rooms:

Because it was such a beautiful day, though, the best part was exploring around the fort, all the banks and berms and cannon emplacements with an outstanding view to the river:

In the distance, there's even a perfect view of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. 

That walking path at the bottom of the photo and all the green space between it and the fort is a fee-free area, so I bet the whole area was MOBBED with spectators in the hours and days after the bridge's collapse.

I really liked all the cannon emplacements. During the Civil War, they were turned to face Baltimore in case of insurrection:

Genuine cannonball from the 1814 bombardment:

View from the jail:

View INTO the jail!

This is really cute. On the 100th anniversary of the bombardment, they dressed children in little red, white, and blue capes to make a "living flag." 

We spent about three hours exploring, and I wish we could have packed a picnic and spent the afternoon, too--I mean, look at this beautiful day!--

--but we were actually supposed to be literally moving my kid out of her dorm room that day, as well, ahem.

And on the way there it would be practically hardly any detour at all to just sneak by the First State National Historical Park for a couple of hours...

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Six More Sites To Go Until I Win Wilbear Wright

Y'all know I love myself a quest. 

A scavenger hunt. 

A checklist. 

A BINGO game. 

A trail.

If there's a prize I can earn, even better!

So this Aviation Trail checklist of 17 sites in and around Dayton, Ohio, that are important to the history of flight, has me by the throat this Spring. I want to visit all the places on the list, from cemeteries to college libraries to what looks like a warehouse on the grounds of a county airport. I want to stamp little stamps on all the sites. I want to earn a stuffed teddy bear wearing a flight jacket and goggles whose name is Wilbear Wright. 

And I will drag along whomever in my family can be tricked into getting into the car with me.

This particular adventure was an easy enough start, since we had to drive through Dayton to return the older kid back to college on the last day of her Spring Break. Might as well detour over to visit the first stop on the list, the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park!

It's been 7 and a half years since the kids and I last visited this national park site (which means I could also snag its passport stamp, yay!!!), and my partner had never been, so even the stuff that the older kid and I have seen before felt fresh and new to explore:

I'm still astounded that Wilbur and Orville built this dresser as children. On my last visit, though, I don't think I noticed the signage that suggested that the boys got their technical minds and interest in working with their hands from their mother. Yay for strong female role models!

I really want to visit Kitty Hawk some day. There's a passport stamp for it, after all!

I want to cross-stitch this on a pillow. I think it's hilarious:

If the brothers hadn't also invented the aircraft propeller, their planes wouldn't have worked. This, then, is their greatest innovation:

OMG I found a display that contains my bear. Don't worry, Wilbear Wright, I'm coming to claim you soon!

There wasn't a ton of stuff to see from the brothers' childhood home, which Henry Ford bought and had moved to Michigan, but here's their porch bench:

The second floor of the visitor center houses artifacts from the Wright Brothers' print shop that was located here:

There's also a parachute museum on the site, and I was interested to see that we got some of our parachute innovation through Project Paper Clip, yikes:

Tangent, but this parachute museum inspired me to look up where I can go tandem skydiving. The older kid said she'd love to tandem skydive, too, so someday this might be us!

OMG look who it is. I'm coming back for you, Wilbear!

Our time at the visitor center happened to line up with a ranger-led program that took us across the park to the location of the Wright Cycle Company:

Here's a recreation of their workshop in the original space:

Check out the cork handgrips and wood rims on that bike!

This is the original floor, so we're treading the ground that Wilbur and Orville trod!

Huffman Prairie, the second location of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Site and another precious stamp on the Aviation Heritage Trail, is only open on Wednesday and Thursdays, for some baffling reason, but happily, Paul Laurence Dunbar's house, the third location of the national park site and another precious stamp on the Aviation Heritage Trail, is only open on the weekends!

Here's Dunbar's bicycle, purchased from the Wright Cycle Company:

I'm conflicted about Dunbar, who was a brilliant poet but who abused his wife and actually nearly killed her before she managed to escape. He had a tough life and was the target of racism at all levels both overt and institutionalized and it's not like they had therapy back then, but still, I can't like someone who abuses their wife. But look at his darling little baby dress that he wore back when he was fresh and new and didn't know what his life would hold:

Side note: the stitching is sublime:

The last time we visited, I was also struck by the thoughtful and compassionate caption for this cane that hides a secret flask of alcohol. Dunbar was one of history's best code switchers, and he seemed to move seamlessly through various economic stations and within various cultural norms, but it never quite worked out the way he probably wanted, and he seemed to have always felt like he had something to hide:

Afterwards, I longed to sneak in just one or two more heritage trail sites, but the kid really did need to get back to school, so I just sighed a petulant sigh and took her. Little does she know that the trip to bring her home at the end of the semester will encompass a couple more sites, ahem, and then maybe just one early summer day trip and I'll finally be able to bring my Wilbear home.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Back and Forth Through Pennsylvania: Fort Necessity

I tell you what, when your kid attends college in Pennsylvania, it really gives you a chance to knock out those Pennsylvania national park sites!

I've done more USA roadtripping in the past 10 months than I usually do, and Pennsylvania is currently my favorite state to visit national park sites in. One, they're all free, and two, they're (mostly) all open 7 days a week! On this recent trip home from Philadelphia, my partner and I dared to drive home on a Wednesday, and were punished for our audacity by having First State National Historical Park, Hampton National Historical Site, and Monocacy National Battlefield all closed. 

But our good buddy Fort Necessity was open! On a Wednesday, even! 

A place that I had a blast visiting with the kids back when they were little and we were on yet another magical homeschool adventure probably isn't the best place for me to visit directly after dropping them off for their Spring semesters, because for some reason I always feel so much more bereft after this drop-off than I do after the Fall semester drop-off--which is why I *wanted* to visit First State National Historical Park, Hampton National Historical Site, or Monocacy National Battlefield instead, humph. But obviously the only thing worse than visiting a national park site and feeling sad that I miss my kids would be NOT visiting a national park site at all. 

A twelve-hour drive with NO learning?!? And NO passport stamps?!? Heaven forfend!

So bravely (and nostalgically) I marched onward to the fort.

And hallelujah, the fort's bathroom! My partner and I were currently in a fight because that morning he'd randomly called down to have the valet bring the car around while I was literally in the bathroom still getting ready for the day(?!?), and THEN when I met him in the lobby after freaking out to finish getting dressed and packed as fast as I could (I am positive I left something behind in that hotel room...), he told me he was going to go start the car and then come back inside to check out, so I walked ten feet away to the coffee carafes, but apparently while I had my back turned fiddling around with the coffee he indeed came back inside and checked out, but then he went back outside to the car and just sat there at the curb without saying so much as a peep to me, so I stood in the hotel lobby like an asshole for several minutes, sipping coffee and thinking, "Gee, it's taking him a long time to start the car..." 

Just between us, I feel like I have grown discernibly stupider in the past five years. And also, SO HAS HE.

ANYWAY, I would have happily wet my pants that morning before I asked to stop for a bathroom break, so thank goodness for a heated, comfy visitor center bathroom... with limited edition Halloween Bath and Body Works foaming hand soaps?

I love how hard some national park site's museums go. I blew the below photo up extra-large for you so you can admire the realistic expression of anguish on that poor guy's face as he supports his dead comrade: 

Below is one of my all-time favorite history facts:

When I die, bury me like Braddock!

I thought this was a really interesting way to preserve a cultural artifact:

It's a modern recreation of a war belt that could have circulated in the mid-1700s, but the beads that make it up are authentic glass trade beads from the early- to mid-1700s. It's so much more interesting than a modern plastic recreation war belt plus a display pile of these authentic glass beads would have been. It's also powerfully subversive, in that it reminds you that the beads that Europeans traded to the Native peoples were then used by the Native peoples to communicate intentions of war against the Europeans.

The French burned Fort Necessity immediately upon their victory, and afterwards much of the knowledge of the fort passed from living memory, so much so that the below model shows what the Fort Necessity National Battlefield first erected in 1932. That's what they thought Fort Necessity looked like!

This dinky little stack of sticks is what it actually looked like:

I think it's fun to see it in the snow, because the original Fort Necessity wasn't around long enough to experience a single snowfall:

I thought about the kids and missed them a lot on this visit. 2016, when they were 10 and 12, was a particularly great homeschool year for us, and this October road trip that we took to see several sites of the American Revolution was just about perfect. The kids were enthusiastic about everything we did and saw, soaked up every piece of information, skipped rocks across the Delaware at Washington's Crossing and sang "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" at the Minuteman battle site, walked the National Road and recited "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" in front of his statue, earned every Junior Ranger badge we came across and listened to Dear America diaries and The Matchlock Gun in the car between stops. Currently sitting, as I am, with the discomfort of not knowing what I should do next with my life, it's easy to sink into the nostalgia of the good old days and wish I could just do that again.

Also, I accidentally took several similar photos:

2025

2016

2025

2016

2016

2025

Last of all before getting back in the car for another eight hours, you've got to get your passport stamp, because learning is its own reward, but passport stamps are even better:

There's also a Junior Ranger badge program that's only available on-site, and if you've got more time (and the place isn't packed with snow) you should also visit Jumonville Glen, to see another spot where Washington acted like a dumbass.

So... is travelling around to collect national park passport stamps a suitable fulfilling purpose in life? Asking for a friend, so let me know!

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