de-Intimidator: Annapolis

Showing posts with label Annapolis. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Family Time Back East - Part Three, Trial by 13's

That would be trial by 13-year olds...our two nieces 1.1 and 2.2. Although they only see each other very rarely, they have had an undeniable chemistry that exhibits from the moment they see each other. It was the pleasure of Wife and I to take the two for the day as all the other family members were running around the Washington area doing other things. We had originally thought we'd leave the girls on their own while we did our photographic thing but they wanted to hang out with us. Not to be denied, photography still ensued, just with a different subject matter focus.

Let's start with some more of Annapolis

The Naval Academy

We didn't visit it :(

Boat cruise in the harbor

(Gotta have our harbor cruise)

The harbor in clouds

de-I, Naturalist, studies the 13-year old in her natural state

It rained during our harbor cruise. Once we got back, we saw dark clouds coming and hightailed it back to the rental house before the flood gates opened.

Studies of Rain

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Family Time Back East - Part One

As I mentioned in my last post, we have rented a rather gigantic house in Annapolis so we can assemble the clan together in one location. The house itself is humongous. We find rental houses fall into one of two categories. They are either places that are used almost exclusively as rental properties or they are homes that people occupy that are rented during times when the owner is not using it. This property is clearly of the later category with family pictures and very personal decorations all over the house. It also includes some very unusual rules about what you are allowed to use and what you are not. But trying to find something that fits our needs is difficult with a family or our size so our chief rental research expert, 1A is certainly to be commended for searching this out.

We all arrived yesterday with the exception of 1A and 1.1 who have a commitment back home that she has to fulfill prior to coming out on Wednesday. We decided today to visit the historic center of Annapolis. Oddly enough during the 17 years that we lived in Maryland, Wife and I never visited Annapolis. However, first, early in the morning #1, #3 and I went out to join the Rotary Club of Parole Maryland's weekly meeting. #1 is President of her Rotary Club in Lafayette California, Wife and I have applications into a club in Albuquerque and # 3 is looking at potentially joining a club in Amsterdam. One of the attractions of Rotary for Wife and I is the custom of being able to visit a club wherever you are traveling. This was a chance to experience that and it was quite the welcoming group.

Presidents exchanging Rotary Flags

Then it was off to historic Annapolis

We made a vow that we were not going to travel as a group. It is too hard trying to coordinate going, arriving, balancing the needs of the various age groups. We said we would go as individual units and since this is not a gigantic town, we'd most likely run into each other there. That lasted for about 15 minutes after we arrived, when we all congregated and pretty much did the whole town together with some spinning off of various peoples from time to time.

The weather is very overcast. As is always the case with our Olympus cameras, this leads to lots of issues trying to get shots that really pop. Plus since it is the first time that I've had the camera in had since our last trip, I was fumbling trying to remember how to do things.

Annapolis has an extensive history. It was the site where George Washington resigned his commission as head of the Continental Army in 1783. There is a memorial to Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court who was a Maryland resident. There is much more history here but I was kind of going with the flow of family tide so I'm afraid I don't have all the names of the buildings and their histories for these pictures.

Street scenes