Oh, Say Can You See!

Some months ago, I reconnected with Traveling Clear, a high school friend of mine. Our visit to Gettysburg went so well that we decided to make it a tradition, whenever his work sends him this way. The plan was to see Valley Forge next.


Well, Valley Forge didn't work with his schedule or mine this time, but Fort McHenry seemed do-able, as long as we did it on Thursday. According to Google, the drive should only have taken an hour 40... it took 2.5hrs. It did account for traffic, but not as fully as I hoped.


So, I arrived at the fort with only a half-hour to go before closing. I parked, grabbed a Christmas ornament from the gift shop, and then ran out to the fort proper. It's a good thing I've been training.

The place looks so much like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean that I half-expected to see Jack Sparrow wander across the green. Not that it looks like the kind of place he'd want to be, but maybe he got in trouble. Again.


Beautiful green grass, bright blue sky, red brick work, the waves on three sides... I enjoyed Fort McHenry, although I don't feel as if I saw much. A half-hour is enough to snap pictures, but not enough to read placards and learn about the stuff you're snapping pictures of.


You know, I realize the brickwork isn't there for decoration, but it could be. There's the lowest level, near the water, with some cannons down there. Then a wall protects the majority of the cannons, with breaks in the wall for them to shoot through. Finally, there's a second wall around the fort's buildings, with a narrow walking area between the lowest parts of that wall and the bottom floor of the building.




Something we noted is that, even if an army cleared the first wall, the one that surrounded the cannons, they'd have a hard time doing anything. Gunmen on the second wall would make short work of the majority of them.


So, in this shot, you can see people walking on the second wall, the stairs leading to the lowest level, and, at the top, then one of the ships in the harbor.





Note: you can't see it well in this picture, but these ladies are walking along the mid-tier of the second wall. There is a lower level walkway underneath those white stairs.

This would be one of those displays where I didn't have the chance to read anything and would really have liked to have that chance. I imagine the display, plus the ladies in costume, indicate that families lived in the fort, which makes sense, but the place is tiny. Forts in those days weren't much of a thing, I guess, if they had to house women and kids along with all the soldiers.

I mean... obviously they had strategic importance, but I'm used to modern scale housing. My row of townhouses almost certainly has more square footage than the fort, although, given the more crowded standards of the time, the fort probably houses more people.


When the fort closed, we went into Baltimore itself to visit this restaurant where my friend knew the owner. Supano's was expensive, but good.

After dinner, we took a walk through the docks, which were at least as pretty as the fort. If I didn't have work today, I could have enjoyed a much longer visit, but I did want to make sure I got home in a decent amount of time.

Decent being relative. Ten o'clock is still late for me. :-)