Baltimore and travel

Summer is going much faster than I thought it would.  I thought we might be really bored in the Chesapeake after June but it seems we are really keeping busy but I have no idea doing what.  The best news is we finally got the refrig fixed.  We hope.  Woody at Henderson’s Marina in Baltimore was highly recommended to us.  It turns out his boat was right next to ours so he was easy to get ahold of.  He discovered our capacitor had literally blown apart.  Don’t ask me what all that means but it did look blown apart.  My sister-in-law, Pat, says with a blown capacitor we can’t do time travel.  I was so looking forward to that.  Our other big quandary has been our alternator which has ended up being fixed 3 times within a year.  The last fix we hope has done the job.  We have spent a lot more money on fixing the one we got then if we had just bought a new one.   Hindsight 20/20!!  I am sure you have all had similar experiences.  I feel like we have hemorrhaged money since we came back to the states but Harry keeps reminding me that if we lived on dirt we would hemorrhage even more.  The wound would just get bigger.

So we ended up spending more time in Baltimore, then originally planned but we loved it there.  We are in the really nice part of town with much to do and easy walking.  I have gotten Harry to take really long walks with me everywhere.  All the crime and murders are happening way out from where we were and it’s very comfortable even walking around at night in Fell’s Point where all the action is.  Harry said his next article for the bulletin would be a story about Baltimore.  People should not be afraid to bring their boat in here.  It’s great.  Another great surprise was having an old friend stop by, Dave Rucker, on his CSY.  He saw our boat and had to come visit.  We met Dave early on when we first took off on our boat and have not seen him since 2004.  It was great catching up and seeing him again.  That is one reason cruising is so much fun.  We keep running into friends we have met along the way.

Bus outside of the Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore.  No pictures allowed inside.  

Side of the building.  Amazing museum

Another side of the museum.  It's a must see if you are in Baltimore.  Plan 3 hours at least if you plan to go.

Amazing what you see walking along the streets downtown Baltimore

Just a pretty area downtown with new building going up all over.  It is a beautiful downtown

India wedding along the streets.  

The bride walks and the groom gets to sit on the back of the convertible.  Amazing

The beautiful original John Hopkins hospital building.  Now surrounding it is a whole city

We took advantage of this very cheap marina, Henderson’s, and stayed awhile more.  We rented a car and drove to Pittsburgh to visit our daughter, Karla.  That was lots of fun.  We toured the Heinz Museum, took in a movie, ate breakfast at a fantastic breakfast place and just spent time catching up with her life.  I do miss being with my daughters.  Then we drove 9.5 hours to Ocean City, Maryland and spent 2 days cleaning out a condo for our son-in-law’s father.   He moved rather quickly to Arizona to be near Jenny and Jon and didn’t get a chance to get his personal belongings from the condo he has owned for 30 years.  It is on the market and to be sold with all furniture, dishes, linen etc included but he wanted his clothes and a few other items so we did the sorting and cleaning.  Since that took only a couple of hours we enjoyed swim time, beach time and eating out.  I feel silly calling it a vacation since what we do most of the time people would call vacation.

We decided to take a trip up the Chester River to Chestertown.  It is across from Baltimore on the eastern shore.  It was a beautiful scenic ride up there and very easy anchorage.  We toured this extremely historical town which has many pre Am revolutionary homes and was visited by George Washington 7 times.  They named their college after him and he was so pleased he sat on their board of directors for 7 years and received an honorary doctorate from the school.  It is just a beautiful very historic town and well worth a visit.  We had planned to stay a couple of days but when we got back to the boat, our wonderful alternator decided to cause problems again with sparks flying inside of it.

Harry trying to figure out how to fire that cannon in Chestertown at the Memorial Park

Just a cute downtown, you can't see much.  All old red brick buildings

Any one interested in a famous baseball player: William Nicholson, see next slide

Stamm building with a clock and bell on top.  Built, early 1800's. Stamm's drugstore on the bottom and the rest of the building was designed for entertainment, banquets etc.  People in town paid $1000 to add the bell at the top, which of course, I missed in my pictures.  I am not a great picture taker

Originally the town school back in 1800's and now county offices.  Just a pretty building.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take some of the old 1700  houses.

Next day off we went to Annapolis to get it repaired.  This is the 4^th time and I had reached my limit.  We took it to a highly recommend shop where he said it would take 7 days to repair because of backup work and the diodes were put in wrong the last time.  We decided to buy a new one and send it to the last place and have them fix it on their dime.  It will be our spare.  So finally after all this time, I get a new alternator which will probably serve as our wedding anniversary present since now we can’t afford anything else.  We will be celebrating our 45^th on Sept 12^th.  Unbelievable that this much time has passed and we still really like each other!!!    It’s been a wonderful 45 years and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it except when he makes me really mad, Ha HA.

Annapolis is truly the sailing capital.  These are navy academy sailing boats with their spinnaker's flying.  The next day, Saturday we sail about 500 sailboats out here where we are anchored, either racing or day sailing.  It truly is spectacular.

Annapolis has adopted the bird or chicken or something as their town decor.  As we walked up West street we were quite entertained with these fellows.  This was an international children's organization

He is depicting the sea life and having an intense conversation with Harry

The Mona Lisa of course

The bonus of coming back to Annapolis is the friends we have here.  Frank and Joanne Finney were spending a month here in a condo and pitched right in to help us.  Ron and Karen Sobon, who we have not seen in several years but good cruising friends arrived when we did, so the 6 of us had a fun reunion.  Then of course Dave Skolnick, the cruising station host for SSCA and a good friend was here to help us as well, running for parts as Harry installed the new alternator.  So life as usual is good and all is well.  We will spend another week here as we have a SSCA luncheon next Saturday and then go somewhere.  Not sure where yet.