Maryland – Places I’ve Been – Part 2

During my last post, I shared the 1^st half of my favorite places to visit and some good things to know before you visit the historic state of Maryland.  Here is part two.

Located southwest of Baltimore, Patapsco Valley State Park is Maryland’s oldest state park (established in 1907).  A few years back, two of my friends (Anna and Rob) and I hiked a very small portion of the 70 miles of their maintained trails.  You can also fish, camp, canoe, mountain bike, and horseback within the park.  We stuck to the Avalon/Orange Grove/Glen Artney areas of the park.  Trail maps are available on information boards located throughout the park or for purchase online, at the visitor center, or at the park’s headquarters.  We walked past the Bloede’s Dam and walked across the swinging bridge.  You can walk at Patapsco Park a lot and still not see the same thing twice.  Perfect.
 

I spent many weeks as a kid on the New Jersey shore boardwalks.  So when my friend, Ketina, took me to the Ocean City Boardwalk a few years ago, I was reminded of my summers as a kid – food, sand, food, people watching, ocean smells and sounds, food, walking along the boardwalk, did I mention the food?  Ocean City Boardwalk isn’t as long as some of the ones in Jersey that I grew up with but it’s still nice.  It’s the traditional boardwalk with popcorn (my friend Ketina likes Fisher’s popcorn), pizza, ice cream/frozen custard (Kohr Brothers is yummy), rides/games, tourist souvenir shops, etc, but Ocean City also has Maryland crab cakes and Thrasher’s Fries, which are great.  Here’s a list of 100 free Ocean City activities you might want to check out if you plan to visit there.

Every state has beautiful back roads, and Maryland is no exception.  One of those roads is the Historic National Road, which was the nation’s first federally funded interstate highway going from Baltimore, MD to the mighty Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri.  It traverses 824 miles through six states, including 170 miles within Maryland.  I drove along the eastern Maryland section (Baltimore to Hagerstown) back in May and it was beautiful.  This section parallels I-70 and takes you through all the small towns you would normally bypass, such as Ellicott City, which I spoke of in my last post.  It makes for a great lazy Sunday afternoon drive.

 

Maryland has some beautiful Civil War Battlefields such as Monocacy and Antietam, both of which I visited for the first time this past May.  Monocacy Battlefield is located two miles south of Frederick and it’s the battle that saved Washington, DC in the summer of 1864.  It has a small visitor center that shows a great timeline of all the events before and after the battle.  Before leaving the visitor center, be sure to pick up a helpful free self-guided auto tour brochure.  The route totals approximately 6 miles round-trip.  If you have kids, be sure to bring along a copy of the scavenger hunt for them to complete on your visit to keep them entertained. 

The Battle of Antietam is said to be the bloodiest one-day battle in American history having 23,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or missing after only 12 hours of combat back in 1862.  You should take the self-guided 8 ½ mile 11 stop auto tour through the battlefield. 

My two favorite stops along the tour were climbing to the top of the tower on Bloody Lane and visiting the Burnside Bridge. 

Whether you’re into the Civil War or not, I highly recommend the walking trails along both of the battlefields’ self-guided auto tours.  They make great places to get out of the car, get some fresh air, and get some exercise.

I love covered bridges and I found out this past May that Maryland has two Covered Bridges Trails.  I drove along the Frederick County Covered Bridge Trail that has three bridges (Utica Mills, Roddy Road, and Loys Station), and it was neat to explore some of the beautiful back roads, rolling hills, and history of that part of Maryland.

As I mentioned in the Delaware Blog Post, if you’ll be traveling through the Mid-Atlantic area (Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey), you might want to look into getting an EZ Pass for the toll booths.  In Maryland, there are tolls on I-95 at the Baltimore/Delaware boarder area as well as crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis.  If you pay cash for those tolls, you’ll be in a long line, however, the EZ Pass lines run much faster.  Also, when traveling on I-95 north of Baltimore, you should stop at the Maryland House.  It’s a great, clean, and well-light rest area with restaurants, restrooms, a convenience store, and a gas station.
 

I’ve shared with you my favorite places to visit and some good things to know before you visit Maryland.  In my next post, I’ll share the wish list of places I still want to check out in my state of Maryland.

* Photos taken by Me

Delaware

Welcome Sign.  Picture Taken By Me.

I find Delaware to be much like myself – half Yankee and half Southern.  My mom’s family is from New Jersey and my dad’s family is from southeast Virginia.  That also means, I drove through Delaware A LOT growing up.  I thought there was NOTHING there.  I was 25 before I actually stopped and spent any time in Delaware when I went to Rehoboth Beach (http://www.beach-fun.com/ for more info on Rehoboth Beach) for a long weekend retreat with my church’s young adult group.  It was a lot of fun and the boardwalk in Rehoboth reminded me of the Jersey Shore’s boardwalks that I grew up on so I was at home.  A coworker of mine suggested Thrasher’s Fries on the boardwalk and they were SO YUMMY!!  http://thrashersfrenchfries.com/.  If you’re there, you’ve got to find them.

Rehobath Beach.  Picture taken by my friend, Lori, a few years ago.

If you’ve never traveled in the Mid-Atlantic area of Maryland/Delaware/New Jersey, here are a few things you need to know before you come.  First, there are A LOT of tolls in this area and if you’re paying cash, you’ll be in lines.  If you plan to come to this area often, I’d suggest you get an EZ Pass because those lines are much faster - http://ezpassmd.com/en/home/index.shtml.  An EZ Pass is a box you stick on your windshield.  When passing a toll machine, it scans the box, and it electronically pays the toll with the bank account / credit card number that you gave them when registering.  Most of the time, you can go up to 50 mph through EZ Pass lines.  Secondly, stop at the Delaware House if you’re traveling I-95.  It’s a great, clean, and well-light rest area with restaurants, restrooms, a convenience store, and a gas station.  Third, if you want to drive from southeast Virginia to New Jersey, skip trying to go up I-95 and through DC (District of Columbia) and Baltimore – that’s crazy!  Take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (http://www.cbbt.com/) to the “Eastern Shore,” which is the peninsula with Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware on it.  Then, drive to Cape Lewes and catch the Cape May – Lewes Ferry http://cmlf.com/.  It’s a fun 85 minute cruise/ferry trip from Cape Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey.  I took it a couple of times growing up.

If you want to do some major shopping, keep in mind that Delaware is a tax-free shopping state!!

This past Thanksgiving, my parents watched possibly their favorite “sport” – “PUNKIN CHUNKIN.”  That’s not misspelled and it’s exactly what it sounds like – they hurl pumpkins, and not just little kids tossing them across the yard, but grown men catapulting them the distance of a football field!  Well, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP of PUNKIN CHUNKIN that we watched last year is in Bridgeville in early November every year - http://www.punkinchunkin.com/.  It might be an interesting road trip.  While researching Bridgeville, I found they are the home of RAPA Scrapple Company.  What is scrapple?  Let’s call it a “meat product” and leave it at that.  It tastes good so just eat it and not ask what’s in it.  The town is pretty proud of them.  They even have an Apple Scrapple Festival in the fall - http://www.applescrapple.com/!

Lastly, I love lighthouses, and Delaware has a lot of them to visit.  A website that I love to do research on that I didn’t include in my “show my hand” post is http://www.lighthousefriends.com/.  It has all the lighthouses in the United States by state.

These are just a few of the things you need to know and a few of the places I want to go visit in Delaware.  If you know of anywhere else in Delaware we should check out, please leave a comment below.  See you next week when we explore what’s just round the corner in Florida.