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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I Read Death in Grand Canyon, Because I Needed To Be Told Not To Pick Up a Rattlesnake With My Bare Hands

Photos courtesy of a 2010 trip I took with the kids to the Grand Canyon. There's more than enough to see even when you're standing behind the guardrails and staying on the path!

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Y’all know how obsessed I am with my Special Interest of Human Mishaps in National Parks. I like to tackle it through various lenses--missing people, or search and rescue, or the occasional paranormal theorist--but my favorite is this type of book that simply chronicles every single death, of every circumstance, in one specific national park.

While Death in Grand Canyon isn’t nearly as gruesome as Death in Yellowstone (sooooo many people have been boiled down to their bones in Yellowstone! So many people have been devoured by bears!), it’s still pretty gruesome. I now know so much about how to die of dehydration, and ALSO how to die of hyperhydration. Eat salty snacks while you chug your water, Friends!

As I gleefully announced every time my husband walked by while I was reading this book, the main risk factor for dying in Grand Canyon appears to be being male. Men are the ones pranking their poor daughters by pretending to fall off the rim and then slipping and actually doing so (Greg Austin Gingrich). Men are the ones trying to pick up rattlesnakes with their bare hands. Men are the ones ducking under guardrails to go stand on the rim, and when their young sons warn them that they’re not supposed to go past the rail, they respond, “You gotta take some chances in life,” then immediately step onto an unsupported snowbank and fall 350 feet (Richard Pena). And most of all, apparently, men are the ones insisting on peeing over the edge of the canyon, then getting dizzy and falling to their deaths with their dicks out.

And when men aren’t actively getting killed on their own behalf, they’re actively dragging their women into death instead. I am still absolutely fuming about the talented young athlete Margaret Bradley, whose amazing performance at the Boston Marathon and in her collegiate competitions had her planning for the Olympic Trials… after she visited her buddy Ryan in Flagstaff, of course. He was a runner, too, and had planned a fun fifteen-mile training run for them down and back at the Grand Canyon.

It wasn’t even so much that Ryan’s proposed trail was WAY longer than fifteen miles. Or even that they didn’t carry nearly enough water. Or even that when they got tired and dehydrated and Ryan couldn’t continue, they agreed that Bradley would pound on to their destination and send help. That’s all stupid, but every one of those mistakes could have been recovered from. The mistake that couldn’t be recovered from is when Ryan, who’d sheltered in place overnight, was rescued the next morning by a USGS employee who happened by, HE DID NOT TELL HER THAT HE HAD A COMPANION WHO WAS MISSING. Instead, he was like, “Yeah, I’ve got a buddy down at Phantom Ranch. Can you have someone tell her I’m moving the car?” Like, Dude literally just assumed that Margaret, suffering from dehydration and heatstroke, had blithely run all the way to Phantom Ranch and then just… what? Hung out there without breathing a word to anyone about HIM?!?

You guys. This dude hitched a ride with that USGS employee back to Flagstaff, still without breathing a word about his missing companion, and went to bed. Meanwhile, Margaret’s parents are freaking out that she hasn’t checked in with them, they’re calling everyone, they finally get the police to get ahold of Ryan early the next morning, and he finally tells the authorities the actual story so they can get a helicopter out to look for Margaret.

The coroner’s report stated that Margaret had died about 12-24 hours before the helicopter spotted her. If Ryan had told anyone that his running buddy had kept going and he didn’t know where she was, she wouldn’t have died lost and alone from heat stroke.

I swear, y’all, if you’re a man and you want to go to the Grand Canyon, you need to first make sure it’s your turn with the single brain cell that you all share.

Fortunately, or the book might be too depressing even for me, we also learn about plenty of heroes whose quick thinking and compassion save lives. In 2001, when a couple with four children went hiking down the canyon, they didn’t keep track of their kids and the three older kids ranged far ahead of the parents and toddler. The three older kids happened upon a Boy Scout troop whose leader, Jim Furgo, had just made the decision that the troop was going to forgo their fun overnight at the bottom of Hualapai Canyon because of the weather forecast, and when that Boy Scout leader saw three unaccompanied children hiking towards an area he considered unsafe, he roped them in with his troop, and they all hiked a mile to a much wider area. And so when the flash flood came through the canyon with its 20-foot-high wall of water, the parents and toddler died, but Jim Furgo had saved the lives of every child with him.

I framed it for the vista, so you can't tell that they're not sitting anywhere NEAR the edge. Don't sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon! Your brain can't make sense of the perspective and will make you lose your balance or feel faint as you're getting up.

Although the authors can be a bit glib at times, I appreciated their emphasis on what one can learn from these accounts. Listen to the park rangers and heed all warning signs. Bring more than enough water, and enough salty snacks to accompany them. Don’t hike alone, if possible. Ensure that someone outside your party knows where you will be and when you plan to return. Be mindful of local weather. Don’t sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, because you’ll stumble or get vertigo when you get up and fall. Don’t use the Grand Canyon as your suicide plan, because it’s traumatic for the people who have to pick your meaty bits out of the dirt.

And don’t try to pick up a rattlesnake with your bare hands. Why are people even doing that in the first place?

P.S. View all my reviews.

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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.

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Can You Go to Philadelphia Without Visiting Independence National Historical Park? I Apparently Can't!

In the past twelve months, every single time I have put a toe into Philadelphia, I have found myself, at some point, in Independence National Historical Park.

Most recently, my partner and I spent a couple of days in Philadelphia after dropping our younger kid off at college nearby. We tried to do a few non-national park things, like eating cheesesteaks (of course!) and having drinks at the Library Bar (which I didn't really like, ahem)--

I got the Chocolate River, but it ended up kind of grossing me out because there was a giant ice cube in it, and chocolate shavings ON the ice cube. Hard chocolate plus ice doesn't feel like a palatable combination, shudder. I wish now I'd gotten the Candy Man instead.

--but somehow, inevitably, on our last morning in the city, we found ourselves here:

It's the low season at Independence Hall, I guess, so they were offering first-come, first-served group tours without the $1 pre-registration.

Y'all KNOW how I feel about saving money!

Even with that incentive, the crowds were so low that it was nice to be able to walk around in the gated site and take photos without having to worry about crowds. 

And even though it was soooo cold, it was such a pretty day!

I really like how park rangers get to have their own personalities on the job. I love chatting with them, and I love attending their programs, hearing their own unique perspectives on the content. To be fair, I'm still pissed at the park ranger at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historical Site who told me that homeschoolers are "less curious" than traditionally schooled children (oh, the comebacks I've thought up for her in the intervening years!), but the time that I recently spent roasting Andrew Jackson with a park ranger at Johnstown Flood National Memorial are some of my happiest since sending the kids off to college. 

All that to say that the park ranger who conducted our tour of Independence Hall was A Character.

He led a great tour--showed us all the proper stuff and gave us all the cool information--

--but I felt like he high-key thought we were stupid, and it was hilarious. First of all, he kept calling us "folks," but in that way that your one high school history, teacher, say, who was an older dude and clearly longing for retirement but he needed to stick it out a couple more years to get his full pension, would talk to you. Like, condescending and kind of chastising? You obviously haven't studied enough and you don't remember all the nice history you were taught and what kind of person does that make you?

Honestly, we probably deserved the park ranger's tone of chastisement and condescension, because he kept asking us really hard questions and visibly having to push down his annoyance when nobody knew the answer. I helped out the group by knowing one answer--"Articles of Confederation!"--but yikes, dates are my weak spot. And everyone else's, too, apparently! 

Oh, his best question, though! He was trying to get us to name the event he was describing, and none of us in our group of probably twenty knew what the fuck he was talking about. Visibly irritated, he finally said, "Most of you probably have a picture of this event in your pockets!" I was all, huh... maybe something about George Washington? Or Alexander Hamilton? I was literally about to suggest the ten-dollar founding father without a father when the ranger finally broke and exclaimed, "The Continental Congress! It's right there on the back of every two-dollar bill!"

I lost control of myself at that point and sort of stepped to the back of the group so he wouldn't notice me silently losing my mind with laughter, and found there two other wayward souls who were also snickering. He was just clearly so mad at how stupid we were! But seriously--the two-dollar bill!?! I haven't seen one of those in... I don't even know how long! I used to save them and spray glitter on them for the Tooth Fairy to put under the kids' pillows because they're so special, but I had to stop because I couldn't find anymore. Like, ever. Who on earth still has a two-dollar bill in their pocket, much less so consistently that they remember what's on the back of the bicentennial version? 

OMG it was awesome. I haven't felt like my high school self in a billion years, and I think I really needed that.

Obviously, even though I was literally right there a month ago, I had to go back to see the Liberty Bell afterwards. For, you know, my partner's sake! Surely he wouldn't want to leave without seeing it!

Yeah, you can clearly see that I'm just gritting my teeth and enduring it solely for my partner's sake...

I'll just point out here for the umpteenth time how well-designed this spot is. The Liberty Bell is on display with Independence Hall in the background, and it's just such a cool scene.

Whenever my partner and I visit a city, he will NOT stop talking to the various solicitors and other denizens who approach him, I swear to god. He has literally taken those stupid CDs that people try to hand you in New York City, and those stupid tourist maps and tourist "newspapers," and once upon a time walking back to our hotel late at night in Nashville, a woman came up to us to ask for gas money, my partner STOPPED TO TALK TO HER, and I 100% left his ass and kept on walking. If you're not going to be reasonable you can get mugged on your own, Buddy!

He gave her twenty bucks, and I was absolutely gleeful in pointing her out to him the next night, in the exact same place doing the exact same thing. 

So on this morning, I had lectured him before we left the hotel about not talking to strangers, no matter what they said to you. I hadn't had any issues when I'd come to the city with the younger kid, but when I took the older kid we'd had to steer around a couple of people trying to accost us on the Metro and then another person on the sidewalk, so I was not up for any nonsense on this trip.

As we were walking away from the national park site, though, a person who presented as an international tourist stopped us on the street corner and asked, "Is this where Liberty Hall is?" We were right in between both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell building, so I pointed both out to him and told him where to go if he wanted to see either of them up close, he thanked me and walked off, and the second he was out of earshot my partner was all, "AND WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW?!?"

Dude, I'm allowed to talk to strangers because I can tell the difference between a lost tourist and a career mugger!

And then I cooled his irritation with another cheesesteak, because nobody can be mad while eating cheesesteaks!

So far every time I've visited Independence Hall it's been with a different member of my family, each of whom I insist must be "shown" the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, etc. But now that they've all individually seen it, along with me three entire times, what on earth excuse am I going to make to visit again?

Stay tuned, I guess, because I'll think of something!

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