Baltimore and Washington- Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014

It seems like it is completely impossible to be at Fort McHenry "at the dawn's early light" this morning.  The security around the fort means that you can't park near the fort and the shuttle bus from the Inner Harbor doesn't start running until 8:00.  That's disappointing, but the NPS has pointed out several times that the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key wasn't actually raised until 9:00, so that's when they've scheduled events there.  As a result, I slept in a bit longer than I would have.

I went down to the Inner Harbor again, with the intention of parking in the same garage I did yesterday.  The fire department was stopping traffic as they put up a large flag across Pratt Street, the main road by the harbor, so I made a turn sooner and actually found a garage closer to the harbor than before.  I found the people waiting for the buses.  By the time we reached the fort, though there were already people there.  I had assumed that the ceremony would be taking place on the outside of the fort, where the stage was still up from last night, but in fact it was inside the fort.  The fort itself was already filled to it's capacity-- it's not a very big place, really.  So I took a seat on one of the chairs that I couldn't get last night and joined the crowd gathering and sitting to watch the proceedings on the big TV screen.  I did have a clear view of the flag pole above the ramparts, and that seemed very appropriate.   From that spot outside, we heard the ranger addressing the public about the replica flag they were about to raise, and could see it gloriously unfurl in the bright sunlight.  In addition to the impressive size, the lightness of the fabric makes it even more impressive in the sun.

The musicians of the fort played Yankee Doodle as the big flag was raised.  Then a verse of the anthem was played and sung.  Several speakers (including Colin Powell) read the full verses of the anthem.  The introduction of keynote speaker Colin Powell seemed almost as long as his address.  His speech was good, but covered much of the same ground that had been covered in other addresses this weekend.  The crowd was then asked to sing along with all four verses of the anthem (which was the fourth rendition of the anthem in this ceremony alone, if you include the read version).  

Rather than try to go into the fort, I went to the visitor's center.  I hadn't seen the original draft of the anthem in Francis Scott Key's own hand.  It was on loan from the Maryland Historical Society and on display in a big room where the audio visual program gives the history.  As the program got to the part where the song is sung, I was reading the verse on Key's draft, the very words that are 200 years old today.   (I noted that there was no wait at the gift shop this morning.)  I got a peek at the parade of sailing ships passing in front of the fort, including the Pride of Baltimore II, which carried the official re-enactor portraying Francis Scott Key.  (Remember, he had originally been watching for the flag from a British ship.)  I then started to make my way back to the shuttle to get to my car.  Along the way, I stopped at the tent run by the U.S. Postal Service and bought a pin of the Fort McHenry commemorative "Forever" stamp that had its first day of issue ceremony yesterday.

When I got back to the Inner Harbor, I still had one piece of unfinished business.  I still had not gotten the commemorative coin.  The tents were not open because it was still before 11:00.  I waited near the Canada Parks booth again.  A few skydivers were parachuting in above the city.  As soon as the tent with the coins opened I presented my stamped passport.  I thought for a minute that the guy there wasn't going to give me one.  I had to sign a paper for it, but did finally get it.  It will go in a shadow box along with the other bicentennial pins and coins I've collected over the past two years.

I got back to my car and headed south.  I stopped at a McDonalds outside of Baltimore for lunch, and used the WiFi there to decide my next step.   The original Star Spangled Banner flag is the centerpiece in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.  I've seen it before on a number of occassions, but it's the one big piece of the story that I haven't actually seen this weekend.  It was so close, and the actual anniversary date.  I would surely regret it if I didn't try to go visit it today.  

Getting into Washington was actually pretty easy.  The traffic wasn't bad, and after circling the block once, I found a place to parallel park right on Constitution Avenue, in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  I walked down one block to the museum where the flag is on display.  They had many signs and banners outside the building noting the flag was there.  I called Julie to let her know where I was and to see what I might get the girls.  Anna wanted a tie-die t-shirt, and I was looking right at a street vendor selling some as I was talking on the phone.


I expected to have to wait in a long line to see the flag, but in fact, there were no more people viewing it then usual.  I spent a short time there (and broke the rules to take a quick video of it).  Before leaving the museum, I figured I'd look for the other important 1814 artifact that I knew the Smithsonian has.  There is a piece of charred timber that was part of the White House, apparently burned when the White House was burned by British soldiers in August, 1814.   I asked several people where it was on display, but no one seemed to know where it was, in spite of the fact that I've seen it featured in their book, The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects.  While I was looking around, a brass quintet from the Air Force started playing the anthem one more time.  It might have been the nicest rendition of the song I've heard all weekend, and it rang off the walls of the main foyer, just outside where the flag rests.

Before leaving the Smithsonian, I saw a group of young employees trying to get people to have their picture taken in front of a green screen.  They can then put your picture in front of any of a number of things.  I noticed that one of those things was the Star Spangled Banner itself.  I also noticed that the picture would come dated today, Sept. 14, 2014.  I sighed to myself and figured they must have seen me coming.  "Just take my money," I thought.   So I stood in my Fort McHenry t-shirt and posed.  The guy taking the picture wanted to take another shot of me holding some little flags too, but I drew the line there.  "Let's not be silly about it," I said.  I ended up buying a $30 package deal. 

I walked down one more block to see the White House.  200 years plus about 2 weeks ago, the British soldiers burned it in one of the most infamous moments in the war.  I wanted to stop while the anniversary of that was still fresh, and took a selfie and a few other pictures there.  For the three girls, I picked up some D.C. t-shirts from that vendor.  

Then it was time to start making my way back home.  It was about 2:30.  I had done everything I wanted to do this weekend.  Now it was a long drive back.  I got to the rental car place near the Buffalo airport at about 10:45.  Julie was along a few minutes later and my trip was done.

 

Baltimore- Saturday, Sept. 13, 2014

On many of our trips, we have taken time to visit one particular spot for no other reason than it's mentioned in a song.  This weekend might be the mother of all of those sidetrips.  It's the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore and the bombardment of Fort McHenry and therefore, it is also the 200th anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner.  Baltimore has planned a "Star Spangled Spectacular," and I knew I wanted to be there for it.

I would have liked to have come in uniform, but there weren't other guys from the 22nd who wanted to go, and since this is the National Park Service, you can't re-enact without their "invitation."  Even though the uniforms are correct for 1814, I got the feeling that the NPS wasn't interested in having grey coated Americans because there weren't any at the Battle of Baltimore.  I thought about just wearing my 1812 civilian clothes, but there are so many other security rules in place this weekend that I decided it's probably a good idea just to go in regular clothes and be a tourist.  I felt a twinge of regret at the time I left my stuff behind, but in the end it was good it ended up this way because I was able to do so much more today.

Julie had made some other plans with the girls, so it's just me this weekend.  After school on Friday, we picked up a small rental car, had dinner together at Burger King, and I was off to Baltimore on my own.  Lizzie the GPS helped get me there, though she did take me through some of the sketchier parts of Harriburg, PA.  In the end, I got to my hotel room in Baltimore around 1:00 AM.

I woke up a few times, but convinced myself to stay in bed until about 8:00.  Then I got up and made my way to where I was supposed to park.  I had made some reservations for parking online, because I figured it would be hard to find a place.  As it turned out, I was still early enough that there was plenty of parking.  I was supposed to text something or other in order to enter the parking garage, and I borrowed Julie's phone partly for that purpose.  It wasn't really working for me, so I took a ticket anyway, and faced the possibility of paying for parking twice.  As it turns out, many people were having problems with this company's system today.  I was able to return during the day, and got a pass to use instead of paying a second time to get out.

I was parked very near the Inner Harbor area, and strolled down to take a look around there.  There were several tall ships docked, including the Constellation, which is always there, a Coast Guard ship, a ship from Philadelphia and one from Delaware, as well as what appeared to be a Spanish galleon from Spain.  I took lots of pictures and enjoyed the morning.   You could tour the ships on other days, but since they were preparing to go out for the afternoon, most of them were closed to the public this morning.  Only the Coast Guard ship was open, and it had a long line forming.   I just viewed them from the sidewalk along the docks.

There was a big tent among the vendors marked "Official Merchandise," and I figured it was going to open soon, so I waited.  It turned out to be a longer wait then I expected.  While waiting, I visited one tent that had been set up by Parks Canada, with rangers explaining Canada's experience in the war.  The information tent opened, and I discovered the commemorative coin that was being offered for this weekend.  It wasn't for sale though-- you had to work for it.   You get a "passport" and have to collect stamps at various sites throughout Baltimore.  Well, that pretty much determined what I was going to have to do for the rest of the morning.

After I got a Star Spangled Spectacular t-shirt and some pins at the Official Merchandise tent, I went to the Baltimore Visitor's Center.  It was the first place I'd need to get a stamp from.  The woman there also told me how to find the next two places.  The Flag House was just a short ways from where I was parked.  She gave me a map that would also help me find the Maryland Historical Society.

I knew about the Flag House.  Julie and I had visited it on a trip to Baltimore a long time ago, when we were living in Virginia, but to be honest, I didn't remember much about it.  It's the home of Mary Pickersgill, who sewed the gigantic flag for Fort McHenry-- the flag that would become known as the Star Spangled Banner.  I wasn't going to visit the Flag House today, but it wasn't far from the Inner Harbor, and I could get my passport stamped there to get the coin.   I was glad I went.  There is a new visitors center there that has a small but interesting museum about the flag.  Among other items, they have the original receipt for the order of the flag, signed by Maj. George Armistead, the commander of the fort.  In spite of the new visitor's center, there is a rather dated film shown on amateurish equipment, but it does the job of telling the story of how Mary Pickersgill made the flag to Armistead's specifications (a story I would hear told quite a few times today).  I guided myself quickly through the house itself.

My next stop was the Maryland Historical Society for another stamp.  The problem was, I didn't really appreciate how long of a walk it was going to be, nor how the neighborhood changes as you leave the Inner Harbor area.  The woman at the Baltimore Visitor's Center had explained how to take the light rail train, but I didn't understand what she meant at the time, and it didn't look that far on the map.  What made matters worse was I accidentally walked past the Historical Society without knowing it and walked quite a bit farther than I should have.  I finally asked a guy in an Orioles hat how far I had to go to get to Centre Street, and he said I had passed it quite a ways back,.  I also tripped along the way, and fell and hit the ground pretty hard.  I walked away with only a skinned knee-- which is lucky considering how I was having knee problems earlier this year.  It was also raining now, with a light but drizzly mist.  Once I found the historical society, it was much later than I expected it to be.  They had an 1812 exhibit, but I just got my stamp and didn't bother to pay admission here.  I wanted to get to the fort and still hadn't eaten lunch.  I had seen the light rail train passing me, and I could figure out how to get back on it.  After all, I had ridden on subways in France and Moscow.  How hard could Baltimore be?   It took me back to Camden Yards, where the Orioles play.  The Yankees were in town for a game, which added to the large number of people around.  I got some street hot dogs for lunch from a vendor by the stadium, and learned about the free shuttle to Fort McHenry.  It was a short walk to that, and I was on my way to the fort.

The bus dropped us off about a half mile from the fort.  Because of security, almost no vehicles were allowed to get closer.  I went through security easily.  No bags were allowed, and all I had were my cameras and Julie's phone in the big pockets of my shorts.  It was after 2:30 by the time I got to the walls of the fort.  The air show was already going on, but the grand finale with the Navy's Blue Angels hadn't started yet.  I made my way around  to where the crowd was watching the planes and aircraft.  While a Coast Guard helicopter was demonstrating rescue techniques, I called Julie to tell her where I was and that I missed her.  She and the girls had been in a "Zombie Run" that morning, where zombies chase you along a course.  Anna had made it to the end with one flag left, but the zombies got Julie.  She had started with white pants but they were brown by the end.  Anna said it wasn't from the mud.

The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low, and it wasn't certain if the Blue Angels would be able to fly.  They did, however, and it was great watching them.  They came roaring in quite a few times, and we all watched as they passed and turned in precision motions.   They were quite a site.

After the air show I went into the fort and looked around.  It's a small fort, really, similar in some ways to Fort Ontario that we visited this spring.  As I came in, a ranger was starting to call the crowd together for a flag program.  They were taking down the small storm flag, which was representing the smaller of the two that Mary Pickersgill made, and which had flown throughout most of the bombardment 200 years ago.  They were replacing it with a 50 star flag that would fly until the program in the evening.  The crowd also got to unroll "the big flag," which is a replica of the Star Spangled Banner.  It's 30 feet high and 42 feet long, with 15 stars, 2 feet across, and 15 stripes.  After seeing this presentation I started to look through the exhibits in the several buildings.  I didn't remember much from the one time I had been here before with Julie.   The rangers began signaling that the fort itself was going to close.  At 5:00, the fife and drum corps began playing in the parade ground, calling people together to march them out the gate.

As I left, I went through the Visitor's Center, which I had missed on my way in.  It was going to stay open longer.  There was a long, slow moving line of people waiting to get into the gift shop.  I decided to join the line, which circled into and through the small shop.  It was more than an hour to get through all the way to the cash register, but I bought a t-shirt, a coin, some pins, and some other momentos.  (I probably should have waited until Sunday morning, when there wasn't a line at all.)

It was after 6:00 and I needed some dinner.  There was a vendor area nearby and I decided on a sausage and French fries.  By the time I was done with that, I tried to find a place to watch the ceremony at night.  You had to pass through some metal detectors, but the ceremony itself was free. However, the seats had been taken up as the people had exited the fort earlier, so the only thing left was on the ground.  Actually, that's not quite true.  There was a large area in the middle where no-one was sitting, but it was being reserved for VIPs, I guess.  It was frustrating to have that many empty seats, while I was sitting way off to the right on the ground.   A large TV screen had been set up to allow better views of the speakers, but even that was at an awkward angle from where I was.

The program began with the fort's fife and drum corps.  The "President's Own" also played a selection of patriotic music, and the choir from Morgan State University sang.  There were a lot of politicians who spoke.  They all seemed to want to tell the same story again about Armistead ordering the flag from Mary Pickersgill, and Francis Scott Key watching through the night to see if the flag was still there.  I know it was the anniversary, but they all seemed to assume that they'd be the first ones to tell the story.  One former US Senator from Maryland actually did a nice job talking about the history of the campaign, but he was going on for quite a while and had to be handed a note to tell him that he'd gone over his time.  Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is from Baltimore and said she had grown up two blocks from the Flag House, but I swear she pronounced the name "Pickersill" instead of "Pickersgill" when it was her turn to tell the story.

The not-so-well kept secret was that Vice President Joe Biden was there to give the keynote address.  He was apparently supposed to be a surprise.  One of the first speakers addressed each of the politicians by name, but didn't mention Biden, only something about there being someone else here too.  Nancy Pelosi let it slip when she said that Obama had been here Friday and that Joe Biden was here tonight.  I assumed he would be speaking at the other show, where tickets started at $75 and went up to almost $200.  However, when I walked back to go to the port-a-john at one point, I saw I guy who looked exactly like you picture Secret Servicemen from the movies.  He was wearing a suit and tie, had all the body language down, and was standing behind the risers in the rear, not looking at the stage, but facing outwards instead.  When I returned I didn't go to my old spot up front and on the right, but stayed standing in the back.  My view was OK, but certain parts of the stage were obstructed.  When the Maryland governor spoke, he was so completely blocked from my sight, that I thought what we were seeing on the TV screen was coming from somewhere else completely.  I did notice that his podium said "President of the United States" on it. (Correction- It said "Vice President of the United States," but the "Vice" was cut off from the bottom of the screen.)  He introduced Biden.  Truthfully, Biden had the best speech of the night and was the most dynamic speaker by far.  He was a great choice to end the program.  I couldn't see him at all to start with, except on the TV screen.  I shuffled a little to my left, where I could see his suit and red tie, but a camera boom was still blocking his face.   After a bit, the boom went up, but it only revealed that a teleprompter screen was now blocking his face from me, and I could still only see his suit and tie.  I shuffled a bit more, and eventually got a see a little bit of his head, so I can say I saw him in person now.

Jordan Sparks sang the National Anthem after that, and did a nice job.  Then the amazing fireworks began.  I was looking off to my left, towards the harbor, because for some reason I heard those first. The same fireworks were being done in four different places around the harbor simultaneously.  The first jaw-dropping effect was a U.S. flag, done completely in firework explosions.  They followed that with a gigantic "1814" and "2014" in huge digits in the sky.  The music and fireworks were among the best I've ever seen (yes, Julie, including Disney's).  They also spelled "U.S.A" while the song "I'm Proud to Be an American" played and the singer sang "God Bless the U.S.A."  They would repeat the flag and digits once more at the end.   This moment was one of the ones I was really looking forward to.  With the "rocket's red glare and bombs bursting in air," over the fort and the big 15 star, 15 striped flag flying, it was worth the trip down, I think.

Then, when the program was over, all of those people had to leave.  Disney might be used to moving so many people out, but the fort wasn't built for that.  We moved en masse out across the bridge to where the shuttles were about a half mile away.  I was pleased to see that there were maybe 40 school buses set and waiting for the crowd.  The train of buses took a while to get moving though, because the traffic they were pulling into wasn't going anywhere.  I got on what seemed to be the second round of shuttles, and went back to the Inner Harbor and back to my car, though it probably took an hour to do so.  In spite of a few lows, the highs of today were certainly worth the trip.

(Usually I only post pictures that we've taken, but I had to put in at least one of the flag made of fireworks.  Fort McHenry posted this one on their Facebook page.)