After an hour of trying to take down camp, during the middle of Hurricane "Brr its cold" we finally arranged everything into the itty bitty Neon, except that none of the goodies were packed as they normally were, because we were just shoving goodies in the Neon this time in an effort to get the heck out of there, so we had even less room as we headed down the road. Did we mention we have wayyy too many goodies for our Neon, and that they all have to go in a specific spot? Well we didnt know that either until this morning!
At last we got on to the road
. we wound our way up Maryland and back through Delaware, crossing into Maryland again, headed towards Tuckahoe state park. Upon arrival at the "Park" we were very impressed with the campsites, until we tried to get online and book a site (the site malfunctioned), we called the DNR phone line to book it and it didnt work, and we attempted to go to the camp office (just a converted farmhouse with a sign saying "office") and nobody was there and it was locked! It was just a little too odd for either of us, we had too many signs that it wasn't right, and we had sand in too many places to mention and needed a real shower. Lauren looked at Clint and said "I wouldnt be that upset if we stayed in a hotel tonight".
So we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and into Annapolis. We found our way downtown (which is amazingly hard with the one way streets and the multiple roundabouts). The town was obviously designed 300 years ago and NOTHING about the road systems have changed, including the width of the roads, meant to fit a horse and buggy. Did you know a Neon was wider than a horse and buggy? Well we didnt either! That makes us glad we aren't camping in a horse and buggy! So the itty bity Dodge Neon is bigger than we think! The roads were also obviously designed by the same people who were the town drinking champions of 1764 because you can only figure it out if you are drunk. Which means we still havent figured it out and dont plan on driving anywhere in a drunken haze.
We took a 2 hour guided tour of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis which has been there for over 200 years, and was put in place after the Revolution (for you non-history buffs that was when we kicked those tea drinking, fish and chip eating, non-dentist visiting, "cheery old mate" British Tyrants back to their homelands and established our own country). We needed a strong military and the Naval Academy was founded to produce leading military men and women. We did find out that about 20% of each graduating class is female which we thought was pretty high.
We only got to see about half of the tour, because an 8 1/2 foot tall couple decided they needed to be at the front of the tour, and I dont know if you noticed lately, but Clint and I are not vertically blessed people. It was ok though, because the tour guide was fantastic and we could hear him loud and clear. He personally graduated the Academy in the 60's and was a highly decorated officer, as was his son, son in law, and great nephew. He said his son was buried there as well after dying on combat. He married his wife, and saw his children married all in the Naval Academy Church, which is a smaller version of Notre Dame in Paris. Its quite grand and just gorgeous, with Tiffany Glass windows and like an 7000 pipe organ, which is just massive and incredibly hard to play. He said the organist looks like a puppet master pulling the chains and playing the keys
The Academy is highly competitive in sports and both David Robinson and Roger Staubach graduated from there... There is a copy of Staubachs Heisman trophy in the sports arena which was really cool for Clint to see a Heisman up close and in person (Lonnie you need to show Harold the picture). We also saw the level of rivalry between the Army and the Navy, as memorials are established all over the campus and in buildings, showing the number of wins over the Army. In fact flags fly every year based on what sports they have defeated the Army in for that year, and one specific flag only flies in the year they beat the Army in the Major Football game. With every minute of the tour, Clint grew more and more eager to find out more about joining except that we found out he missed the cut off age by about 2 years. The oldest you can enter is 23... oh well..
From the Academy we found our way to the hotel relatively easily and without the requisite drunken haze needed to navigate the roads. It was time to catch up on a well needed hot shower and to see what it felt like to sleep on a real bed again and not an air mattress created by 30 mph winds. We figured while we were utilizing the modern world, we HAD to catch up on the missed episode of Greys Anatomy. Yeah you read that right, we just camped for a week and sat in our hotel room and watched TV on the internet. We know its a soap opera but we've invested too much time in that show, and we needed a mental break!
We weren't quite so sucessfull heading to dinner. Lauren picked one of the oldest taverns in America, dating back to the 1700's, called Midelton Tavern for dinner. We looked up directions and wrote them down on a piece of paper so we could easily make it to our destination 7 miles away. It sounded so close to where we came from earlier that day, that we figured that when we noticed the directions werent in the car with us, that we'd be just fine. Its only 7 miles from our hotel right?
Should it take an hour to drive 7 miles? Because an hour later we found ourselves a block away from our hotel (stupid roundabouts make you drive in circles!) and hadnt driven on any of the roads we had originally seen that afternoon.
We decided to start over from point A, and practically drove straight to it on the second attempt. Unfortunatly we wasted another hour looking for a place to park our horse and buggy, I mean car... well all the spots are only designed to fit transportation from 200 years ago, and only enough to fit the number of people in the town from an earlier century.. I promise there are more people in this town 200 years later, but the local government hasnt figured that out yet I guess, because they haven't seemed to make more parking spots to accomodate the population influx in 200 years. And have talked about the roundabouts yet? They make alot of sense if you are in a buggy and you need to swing wide when making turns, as compared to sharp right angle turns, but as mentioned previously we did not go camping in a horse and buggy and I haven't noticed another one in the city, so the roundabouts are pretty confusing for us all.
We finally found a place to park downtown and walked a block to Middletons Tavern, or as Clint calls it, Miltons' Tavern because I guess that is just easier for him to say, no matter how many times I correct it. Maybe Mr Middleton had a brother named Milton. The food was well worth the crazy journey. We headed back to the hotel and from our earlier detour we learned that only one road leads into Annapolis (or at least where we wanted to be) but all roads lead back to our hotel. Since we've posted our tent pictures every night, we have pictures of our "tent" tonight as well!
