Annapolis MD (Day 2)

Today we visited the US Naval Academy Annapolis.   

Lots of cool buildings.   A unique culture.  Lots of success and leadership has come from this institution. 

They have about 4300 students and all of them live in one (huge) building.  

And all of them can eat lunch together at the same time in the mess hall.   

All recruits go through the equivalent of basic training and all get full rides to school as well as getting paid (about $1300 a month) while here.   

Much of the administration lives on campus in very nice campus housing designed and built by Flagg.    Lots of the buildings here built from Maine granite thanks to politics.   (A way to get the money from Congress...  Always lobbying. ).  

They also have a nice museum and the hospital that eventually moved to Bethesda.  

A few planes here for posterity (no airport) 
And many many graves.   Everything from John McCain,

 to John Paul Jones (early Revolutionary war hero)

And we were really impressed by the chapel.  Four Tiffany stained glass panels.  

and a pipe organ with 1300+ pipes.   They were practicing for tomorrow's service when we were there....

Also memorials.  This one memorialize the victory over the barbarians (Pirates) of North Africa (shores of Tripoli, from the Marines anthem).  Oldest monument in US we were told. 


This is a bit personal for me because I've spent significant time in North Africa (Morocco) having started a business there that employs Berber people (known then as Barbarians). 


The museum on the property has a complete history of naval activity from founding to current plus miniature models of all kinds of early Navy sailing ships. 


After visiting the Naval academy we took a tour of the Maryland House (Congress) building.   

This is where the early Congress met for a time and where George Washington resigned as commander in chief putting civilian elected officials in charge of the military. 

It's a beautiful elegant building with a lot of history.     Harriet Tubman was also born here in Maryland and after escaping to the North had a significant role in the activities of the underground railroad freeing slaves. 

 It's interesting to see the rather starkly furnished room from the 1700s (furnished as it was after the revolutionary war) compared to the elegant rooms created in the early 1900s. 

Annapolis sure does have some cool old red brick buildings....

We didn't anticipate rain today .. but we knew it would be cold.   Not too cold for ice cream though.  Or a good burger from an Irish Pub.  
(We got both).  The ice cream today was vastly better than yesterday's disappointing shake.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Youngs Point ON to Fenelon Falls ON

Image
We left Youngs Point lock wall this morning about 8am with two hours of cruising to get to our first lock.   What a beautiful day.   We had two lakes to cross.  Clear Lake (which is clear)...   And Stoney Lake which is.... Granite.  The beaches are done and the navigation is critical.  It's a common thing to have solid granite just a few inches below the surface on both sides of the boat just 10-20 feet away.  As long as we are in the designated channel it's fine....   But prop repair and replacement is a big business here... Still... Driving past this kind of scenery all day would never get old... (Until it froze).  Eventually we journeyed through four locks today... And up to a fifth.    Lock 28, 30, 31, 32... And sitting just under lock 33.   Yes we are aware 29 is missing.  28 and 29 used to be a set of two (a flight lock) but in the 1960s they automated it (hydraulic controls rathe...
Read more

Fenelon Falls ON to Kirkfield Lock

Image
We are officially nowhere.   We had a pretty short trip today.   We left Fenelon Falls when the lock crew showed up at 10am and could put us through.... But ended up stuck there for a while because the lock (which is automated) was blowing circuit breakers and wouldn't open for the lock master.    As we exited the lock we saw the rocks on the left.  Neatly stacked by humans to draw attention to the massive shelf of rock just below the surface and just off the channel. Without those little stacks it would be easily possible to run into that sheer rock cliff under the surface.  After a while she figured out how to get it to open and we were able to break free and head to our second lock of the day.   This one was tiny and an easy pass.    They informed us, however, that our next lock was the Kirkfield Lift lock and it's on a maintenance day meaning they were not taking any traffic until 1pm so we might as well go slow...
Read more

Ludington MI to Grand Haven MI - and Gold Looper Status!

Image
We are back at North Shore Marina!   The place we started and the place our boat calls home.  We have a new slip (next to where we were last year) and we have a port tie which is best for our boat.   How we tie up here will take some getting used to... We left Ludington today and it was a bit breezy (15-20 knot winds).  It was our best day to get home in the next five though so we went.   You can't see it but the waves were coming up high enough to splash us all the way on the top deck.   Lumpy for the first 30 miles.  Until we reached silver lake sand dunes.  Then we could turn about 30 degrees and quarter the waves a little.  The white caps died down also.  It was kind of foggy today so we couldn't see very far.  More of a haze as it didn't affect navigation but made pictures difficult.  That's the light house at Little Sab...
Read more