I Went to San Diego and Ate Some Tacos

AND I got another national park passport stamp!

Although we're not planning any big New Zealand-style trips this year, we seem to be making up for it with a good variety of smaller US trips. Oh, well--who needs a retirement fund in this political climate, anyway? Might as well enjoy the pre-apocalypse while it lasts!

Anyway, this deep dive into San Diego and its environs is likely the only trip I'll get this year with all of my immediate family members accounted for (the detours I force them to take on the way to and from college drop-offs are also fun for me, but are, by necessity, brief little swindles away from the proper business of the day), so I enjoyed it even more for the novelty of having everyone I love together in the same place at the same time doing some sightseeing along with me.

Also Wilbear, because I didn't work that hard to earn him just to make him sit around the house for the rest of his life:

Wilbear wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and learn about Spain's genocide against the indigenous peoples of North and South America, so that's what we did!

Welcome to Cabrillo National Monument, everyone!

This was actually our first stop after the airport. Or rather, our first stop after paying for and picking up our rental car at the airport. I didn't realize that there was yet one more step in the process after getting settled in our rental, so I busily set up the car's Bluetooth to play my Going to California Spotify playlist and then MORTIFIED the children when my partner rolled down his window to do exit paperwork with a rental car guy and Katy Perry's "California Gurls" was blaring.

I personally thought it was quite festive!

Here's a conquistador ready to enslave and genocide, comfy in the knowledge that smallpox and syphilis are going to do 90% of his job for him:

And here's the path that Juan Cabrillo and his fellow genocidal maniacs took in their route up Baja California, the California coast, and all the way to Oregon:

Cabrillo National Monument is a little peninsula where supposedly Juan Cabrillo became the first European to step onto the West Coast of the future United States, but presently it's mostly a cool viewing point where you can watch various ships sail in and out of San Diego Bay, most interestingly Navy ships because the monument overlooks part of the naval base.

Here's me briefly abandoning my two most treasured companions so I can get a better look at a submarine:

Three national park passport stamps so far this summer, and at least two more before the road trip to college drop-offs even starts. AND my America the Beautiful pass officially paid for itself here, with eleven more months of national park travels still to come!

You can also hike down to the shore, where in the winter low tides apparently reveal some exceptional tide pools. There weren't any excellent tide pools revealed during this particular summer low tide, but we nevertheless had fun clambering around, getting our knees sandy, and making sure we'd touched the Pacific Ocean:

And then, off to tacos!

One of my goals on this trip was to eat as much Mexican food as I could fit into my mouth, so birria tacos were a good start:

The older kid had a California burrito, and the younger kid stole most of my tortilla chips and drank horchata. She was super excited at first to see that there was an entire horchata dispenser(!!!), but it turns out that, disappointingly, none of the horchata she tried in any of the restaurants we ate at were making fresh horchata in-house. I guess you can get a dry horchata mix, and that was what they were using? Later on this trip I'd order a jamaica that had definitely been made from scratch, but by that time the kid was burned from too many packet horchatas and so stuck to her Diet Coke. 

Tomorrow, Palomar Observatory and the desert!

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I Went to the First State National Historical Park, and I Need to Tell You about Caesar Rodney

 

All I wanted to accomplish was collecting my national parks passport stamp for the First State National Historical Park. 

Instead, I got myself caught up in the most pleasant and benign hostage situation.

First of all, I feel like all of these New England states just play fast and loose with each others' mottos. We were in Maryland at this point, not even close to New Hampshire! How does this warrant a New Hampshire state motto-themed pun?

The plan was to hit up First State National Historical Park, walk around for a bit--

cobblestones!

--do the museum so we could figure out what on earth we were supposed to be looking at, because I was, sadly and alas, NOT up-to-date on my Delaware state history, and then get back on the road to Philadelphia.

The museum had all my favorite parts. There were old pipes!

Remember when I mudlarked some exactly like this from the banks of the Thames?

Fun chances for guest input!

A "voter ID" is not an example of a voting right? MAGA party line people are so boring.

Hands-on activities!

I think we're supposed to be noticing how the boundary arc is similar to Delaware's current state line... but I don't know the shape of Delaware that well, and there's not an example nearby. You think too much of me, First State National Historical Park!

Cool tag lines!

Weird statuary!

I texted the kids that I found a statue of one of them in this museum, then waited to see which one got to her phone first to congratulate her sister.

We probably should have left after the museum, because we were technically supposed to be moving the kid out of her dorm that afternoon, ahem, but I wanted to check out the outside of the buildings, and as we were walking around the old courthouse--

--there was a sign that said that you could see inside it if you were on a ranger-led tour, and the timetable indicated that a tour had literally just started one minute ago!

So we popped into the building, where there was, indeed a park ranger, and since we were the only people who'd shown up, she started her spiel right away.

Thus began the nicest, most interesting hostage situation I have ever been involved in. 

Y'all, we got the WHOLE story of this courthouse. We heard interesting stories of the people who were tried and jailed here. We learned where the gallows used to be. We saw a cool handprint in one of the handmade bricks on the floor:

 We learned about the tea room that the courthouse turned into, on account of there were so many tourists coming to and fro on the nearby ferry:

We learned about how one time a youthful Shirley Temple visited the court house tea room with her family on the way to or fro the ferry, was heard sassing her mother there, and the person who heard her wrote a newspaper article about it.

We also saw a copy of the newspaper article.

I'll admit that the presentation did feel a little long, and every time I thought the docent was wrapping up she seemed to go back in time to a different interesting story and sort of start the run-through again with all-new information, but honestly it was so interesting and I was having a ball. Like, I knew that time was passing, but seriously, how long could one presentation be? Might as well lean in and learn stuff.

Finally, the docent really did finish telling us every single thing there was to learn about the old court house, and we got up, thinking we were about finished and let's go hit up the gift shop real quick and then hop in the car, when she was all, "Okay, now watch your step as we go upstairs!"

OMG you guys! There was an UPSTAIRS!!!

When we settled down in this room, we learned everything there was to learn about Delaware state history, including the fact that the 13 original colonies is kind of a lie, because up until just before Independence Day, Delaware Colony was actually not its own separate colony, but part of Pennsylvania! There was a bunch of scuttlebutt about the leadership in Pennsylvania never giving Delaware its due, so when they heard about the Declaration of Independence coming up, the people of Delaware were like, "Screw Pennsylvania! We're going to declare ALL the Independence!"

And they did!

We also learned about Caesar Rodney, who was this sickly Patriot dude who had asthma and migraines and cancer so bad that he commonly wore a scarf to hide a tumor on his face and was always in agony, etc. Oh, and his parents had died when he was a kid but that was actually his big break, because then he became a ward of some rich, political guy who set him up in politics when he was grown. 

During the First Continental Congress Rodney got super sick but since there were three Delaware representatives and they were both voting for independence, it was fine for him to travel home so he could properly rest. But then right before the final vote, he heard that one of his fellow representatives was now going to vote no!

So poor Caesar Rodney, asthmatic and riddled with cancer and also super sick with some virus or something on top of it, rode 70+ miles throughout the night, IN A THUNDERSTORM, to come back to Philadelphia to vote. And when he got back to the Continental Congress, not only did he turn Delaware's vote to independence, but he gave a speech so moving that other representatives of other colonies changed their votes, too!

He's on the Delaware state quarter riding his horse. The docent showed us a picture of it.

We also saw a portrait of Marqus de Lafayette, who gave a speech in front of the court house in 1824:

Y'all, I was so into those Caesar Rodney stories that the presentation just flew by. When the docent finally ended it and told us we could finish looking around the place by ourselves, I checked my watch for the first time and had to double-check that I wasn't randomly in a different time zone, because TWO HOURS had passed!

I don't know, you guys. I know I could have questioned it or called a halt at any time, and I literally thought I was walking in for a ten-minute run-down of a cool old court house, but this docent had me eating out of her hand. I was enraptured for two full hours of Delaware history.

On the way out, the docent mentioned that there was a historical cemetery next door. I said, "OOH, does it have Caesar Rodney?!?"

And then the docent had to tell me that Caesar Rodney, this American patriot who bodily suffered for our independence, had actually been buried in an unmarked grave and we never found out where it was. 

I think I was overwrought from so much Delaware history by that point, because I burst into tears, horrifying the docent. And then I was doing the thing where I was laughing at myself because of my behavior and apologizing for crying and actively crying and just kind of repeating, "OMG Caesar Rodney!"

Anyway, the cemetery had some other cool grave markers!

Lol at this statue of William Penn. Delaware couldn't get rid of you fast enough!

Okay, NOW we can go move the kid out of her dorm!

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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 Have Reached the Pinnacle of Summer Achievement, for Wilbear Wright is Mine

Oh, Happy Day, for I have achieved the dream that I have dreamed since March 14.

Wilbear Wright is MINE!

To earn Wilbear Wright, you have to visit at least eight sites on the Dayton Aviation Trail.

For me, Sites 1 and 2 were the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center and Paul Laurence Dunbar's house.

Site 3 was the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Sites 4 and 5 were the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Sites 6 and 7 were the Butler County Warbirds and the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc.

And Site 8 is Carillon Historical Park, home of an excellent museum about the Wright brothers, including an actual 1905 Wright Flyer in a display that was partly designed by Orville Wright himself!

Also this unrestored part of a 1905 Wright Flyer, which is actually outside the paid part of the park, so you can just go see it whenever you want:

I had to rely on my shitty cell phone camera because the flash on my Canon is even worse, but still, there's so much fascinating detail to see:

The fabric looks like a linen or a cotton--if there was proper signage that said, then I missed it--which is interesting, because the earliest glider that the Wright brothers tested at Kitty Hawk was sateen. Wilbur had to alter it on a local woman's hand-cranked treadle sewing machine because he wasn't able to find the lengths of wood on-site that he needed, and when the brothers were finished with that year's experiments they abandoned their glider, so that same woman scavenged the sateen to sew dresses for her two daughters. 

The stitching was certainly done by machine, probably another hand-operated treadle, and the stitches are VERY tidy--that's what sewing slowly will do for you!

We had come to the park specifically to see the Wright brothers stuff, so were a little baffled at first by the other historical displays. I don't know much about Ohio history other than the Mississippians and the Wright brothers, so we just sort of wandered into old buildings and absorbed random content.

This place had so many animatronics! Well, to my knowledge it actually has TWO animatronics, but two feels like a lot. One of them is this guy, and spoiler alert, yes, he IS related to Ichabod Crane, lol!

We wandered through this old wooden two-story building--

--while learning fun facts like the community's first jail was a literal pit in the ground. I would not want to await trial in a pit!

The buildings were moved to this site, though, so that boarded up well there isn't the pit, I don't think.

You know I have to snoop around every historical vegetable garden I see!

There was a whole building to display a CRAZY flood that the town had on Easter 1913, including this adorable old-timey Weather Channel report:

And there was another whole building full of Wright brothers merch!

The mock-up of the Wright Cycle Company and the print shop was a little weird, since you can see the real versions of both for free about a five-minute drive from here, but I never get tired of looking at these old-timey bicycles with cork hand grips:

Way back at the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc., we overheard a random guy trying to bait the docent into a "gotcha" moment by informing her that in Brazil, they lauded a Brazilian guy for having invented the airplane first. This museum had a whole wall for various pioneers of aviation, including their specific accomplishments, and I'm guessing that guy was talking about this dude:

To be fair, the wording on that display *does* sound a little defensive, so there might be more to the controversy than they're stating. Interesting!

I was genuinely surprised/impressed by how many cool artifacts Carillon Historical Park has scored. Check out some actual fragments of the Wright Flyer II!

AND they've got the camera, THE camera that took the historic photo of the first successful sustained flight:

This guy is my favorite brother. He used to get easily overstimulated and lash out at people, and SAME!

The Wright Flyer III has a terrific gallery all to itself, in which you can walk all the way around the plane and see it at a level that Orville Wright himself specified as the best level to see all the details:

As my older kid and I were standing at the barrier and discussing some detail or other--I will not be convinced that the Wright Flyers do not look backwards, but my kid refuses to agree--all of a sudden out of absolutely nowhere a man started speaking to me from just beside my other shoulder, where there had been literally nobody a second before, and I was so startled that I screamed. 

I turned to him and tried to apologize and tell him he'd just startled me because I hadn't known he was there, but he WOULD NOT STOP INTERRUPTING ME or acknowledge my apology and explanation and instead insisted on talking over me to tell me that if I stood up on the bench at the back of the gallery I could take a picture of the whole plane at once.

For Pete's sake, Dude! But also, he was correct, and I love my photo of the whole plane all at once:

Huzzah to probably our 300th image/recreation of a Wright Flyer at this point! We're earning those Wilbears!

Also, Wilbur Wright's favorite satchel that he apparently took everywhere. I'm obsessed and I want one just like it:

There was an excellent #womensupportingwomen moment in this gallery. My partner and I were sitting on a bench watching early footage of the design and construction of Carillon Park, and in the footage was a video of Orville Wright walking arm-in-arm with Edith Deeds, the wealthy woman who once saw a really cool carillon while she was on vacation and decided that Dayton, Ohio, needed a really cool carillon, too, and if she was going to the trouble to have a carillon built she might as well go to some more trouble and build a whole entire park about it.

ME: "Huh. I wonder when that video was taken?"
PARTNER: "In the early 1950s."

ME: "I thought Orville Wright died in 1948?"

And before my partner could even respond to that--and it would have been in a reasonable manner, because he's not a mansplainer!--a completely random woman looking at a display to our left said, "Orville Wright did die in 1948."

Thank you, Anonymous Woman! She was NOT going to settle for even the smallest chance that my man might double down or act like an ass in the face of my objective correctness. It's also super baller, because whenever I hear a man being vocally incorrect in a museum I just rant about it to my companions while they attempt to get me to rant a little more quietly. 

Should I be confronting more incorrect men?

Anyway, the timeline *is* kind of unclear, because in the Wright Flyer display they make a big deal about the fact that Orville Wright helped with the restoration of the plane for display and then they show him walking with the founder of the park through what looks like some kind of opening ceremony-type festival and THEN they tell you that the museum part of the park opened in 1950 but they kind of elide the fact that by 1950 both Orville Wright and Edith Deeds were dead.

Tangent, but check out this game that Orville Wright patented and sold. It looks bananas, and I want to see it in action. 

On our way out of the park we stopped at the gift shop to collect our very last Dayton Aviation Trail stamp, then have our stamps tallied, and finally receive our very own Wilbear Wright for each of us.

I LOVE HIM. He is ready for adventure, with his little aviation jacket and goggles, and he's the perfect size to pop in my backpack without taking up too much room, so from now on, I'm taking him with me on all my travels. 

Just me and my little old Wilbear, traveling the world and having adventures and counting every Wright Flyer recreation we see!

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!

P.P.S. I'm currently reading this excellent biography of the Wright brothers, so be prepared for a summer FULL of Wright brothers fun facts!