Packed all
the essentials and ready to go ...Dad and four year old Tom hit the road for the first time. Highlights include Fort McHenry, Baltimore Inner Harbor, The B&O Railroad Museum, and the National Air and Space Museum. But the real fun is just in the adventure .. staying in a hotel, riding on the luggage cart, eating in restaurants, taking photos with your very own camera, staying up late, swimming in a pool on the hotel roof, and so on. And oh yes - being an engineer on the fabled Baltimore and Ohio line! The diary below is being written 10 years after the fact; recreated as best I remember.
Packed all
the essentials and ready to go ...
Day 1: We are very excited to be hitting the road. First stop, on a whim, is Fort McHenry, just outside of Baltimore. That's about a 2 hour drive from our house. Birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner.
Raising the
big flag!
We enjoy our tour of the fort, but decide the old jail house is too dark and foreboding to deserve a visit. But is is fun to take pictures with our own camera:
We get to our hotel near the Capitol in Washington in time to check in, grab dinner and watch the tube. Then to sleep in the hotel ... we used a blanket to shield Tom from Daddy's reading light:
Day 2: Today is spent exploring the Smithsonian in Washington, and driving to a few of the monuments (Jefferson and Lincoln I think). Stay at the same hotel.
Gas: $50,
Hotel: $100, Touching a piece of the moon: priceless!
Day 3: Head out early to Baltimore. Morning at the Inner Harbor, including a ride on the pedal boats and checking out the big sailing boat:
In the afternoon we meet my friend Geoff Renshaw and visit the B&O Railroad Museum. After touring the museum we meet up with a friend of Geoff's who works there, just in time for his afternoon run with the old classic locomotive. It hurts our ears walking through the boiler car to get to the engine, but is worth it as we help "drive" the train down the line ... the engineer tells Tom to "push this stick forward to make it go forward, and pull it back for reverse. Simple huh? Any questions?" Tom replies "What if you put it in the middle?"
End of 1994