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Baltimore, Maryland
But in this twilight our choices seal our fate
Even if you don’t count all the times that I have been through Baltimore on an Acela or Amtrak Northeast Regional train (you shouldn’t count those), I’ve still been to Baltimore a lot. But despite all of those visits, this was my first time to Fort McHenry, you know, the Star Spangled Banner one. The fort was like any fort from that time period, but the harbor view was special and for some reason they were firing canons that day, lone shots where the sound flew across the harbor and bounced back as an amazing echo.
Baltimore may have a fort with cannons and an actual downtown, but this day was all about the Inner Harbor, which included a trip to the first rate National Aquarium (still so well designed after all these years) as well as everything else you can do there to kill a sunny afternoon.
One of those things is to visit the observation deck of the World Trade Center. No, not the one you’re thinking about but rather the one in Baltimore, the one that is only 27 stories high but is still the one with the best view of the Inner Harbor.
And now we’re at the wonderful Camden Yards ballpark, where the Orioles (or Os) gave away a game to the hated Washington Nationals. This was my first time at Camden Yards, despite it being open for decades now, and it honestly lived up to the hype. The seats were great (especially after the sun set behind it), the food was good and the experience and views there were exceptional. It’s easy to understand why it has such a good reputation and why so many other ballparks have stolen so many of its ideas for their own new stadiums.
This is Kingsland Point Light. Or Sleepy Hollow Light. Or Tarrytown Lighthouse. It’s been there for 130 years and by now you would have thought they would have settled on a name. Either way, it’s on the Hudson River (or Tappan Zee) in Sleepy Hollow, New York, which used to be called North Tarrytown before they renamed it after a Washington Irving story about a local fictitious monster.
I was up in Tarrytown to see somewhere I have never been to but had always been meaning to go: John D Rockefeller's Kykuit Estate. And I was going to John D Rockefeller's Kykuit Estate for another reason, to test drive from a brand new point and shoot, the extraordinarily well reviewed Sony RX 100. Still getting a feel for what the camera can do. The pictures were (generally) taken with the camera's auto HDR setting and processed later using Photomatix, which seems to be working so far.
We’re still in Westchester County, New York (although really close to the border of Connecticut) visiting the The Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens, on the grounds of PepsiCo Global Headquarters. The sculpture gardens are impressive and well landscaped and open to the public on weekends, although when you’re there you really get the impression that the public is really more tolerated than welcome.
