A tour of Baltimore

Friday, September 13th.

After a quiet and undisturbed night at the far end of the Giant parking lot we woke up to a nice and sunny day in Baltimore, MD. We took highway 40 straight through Baltimore and took a scenic drive out to Rocky Point Park right on Chesapeake Bay. The object of that excursion was to see if there was any way to get across to Hart-Miller Island State Park with the van. If there was, we planned to take a "beach" vacation for a few days. The park was really beautiful, but unfortunately there was no way of getting over to the island from there. So we had to settle for a view of the bay, and then headed back into Baltimore.

Once there, we parked the van downtown Baltimore and went for a walk around to get oriented. We had hoped to take a tour of the Orioles Stadium, but when we found it we discovered that it was all closed up in preparation for some big show the following day. We walked back towards the harbor and had a great lunch (and breakfast for that matter...) at a deli downtown.

We then visited the National Aquarium which is located right on the harbor. And it was really a nice surprise. Especially the sharks and the dolphin show were fascinating.

On the way out of town we drove back up to the Orioles stadium to get a sofa picture. After the run-in with the cop in D.C. we'd decided when we were up there earlier to check with the security officer on duty to make sure it'd be alright to wheel out a couch to take a picture. We tried to explain the idea to him but he didn't really seem to get it :) He just looked puzzled and said "yeah, uhm... whatever guys..." We took that as a yes.
So we pulled in and parked the van up there and pulled out the couch. This caught the parking lot attendant somewhat by surprise, so he came over to hear what we were up to. So we had a nice chat with him. He seemed to understand (or accept) the idea better, and thought it sounded like a fun plan.

After that little excursion we headed back out of town to Patapsco State Park where we'd been the night before and had found the gates closed. This time, however, they were open, and we were greeted by a dreadlocked Park Ranger with a goatee. He set us up with a campsite and gave us directions to the nearest movie theater. So after setting up our outdoor living room and hanging out on the couch for a while and taking a quick shower we went on a trip to the mall. We shopped around for a while and had a decent Mexican dinner at the food court. And then we caught the opening night showing of "Barber Shop"! As it turned out we were the only two white people in a nearly sold out theater :) We felt like we might as well have had 3 heads or a flourescent green aura around us. We couldn't have stood out from the crowd more than we did. But it was fun! If Danish movie theaters were that lively we'd go all the time! And the movie was hilarious -- and highly recommendable.