Maryland

16
Nov
2024

National Harbor Photos

Visiting National Harbor in the Washington, DC suburb of Oxen Hill, MD for Christmas was on my list for a while. Marriott puts on a yearly Christmas extravaganza at all of its Gaylord hotels and National Harbor is the most convenient for us. The centerpiece is their “ICE!” display which features 2 million pounds of ice carved into a walkthrough display kept at 9 degrees. Don’t worry, they provide you with a parka. When I heard the 2022 theme was A Christmas Story, we decided to make this one of the first trips we took as the COVID pandemic was in its last throes. It was a fun trip and certainly put us in the mood for Christmas! Take a look at all of the photos here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
19
May
2014

New photos from Havre de Grace, Maryland

Concord Point LighthouseLast year I visited Havre de Grace, Maryland for their annual seafood festival. (View those photos here.) This year I went back to revisit a nearby restaurant that sells amazing crab cakes that we discovered last year. While down there we also made a second visit to the great waterfront promenade/boardwalk along the area where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay. We climbed the Concord Point Lighthouse and also made a side trip to tour the Susquehanna Museum at the lock keeper’s house from the old Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal. The weather was beautiful, the wildlife was plentiful and this little town on the bay made for a relaxing and fun day. The photos from this year’s visit are now online and ready for your viewing pleasure. Click right here to check them out.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
18
May
2014

Review: Box Hill Pizzeria – Abingdon MD

Box Hill Pizzeria looks like a typical pizzeria, but upon walking in you see it’s packed with customers. Sure, there’s a takeout counter on one side and a separate dining room on the other side. Like many pizzerias, if you want a drink refill, you take you cup up to the machine and refill it. What’s not typical about this pizzeria is that I don’t think anyone goes there for the pizza. Their specialty is crab cakes. In eastern Maryland, a crab cake place isn’t especially uncommon, but I’ve yet to find one that has crab cakes as good as Box Hill. They give you a good sized portion served either baked or fried with almost no filler and huge pieces of lump crabmeat. They also have uncooked crab cakes available for takeout along with instructions to cook them at home and will even ship frozen ones.

To put into perspective how good their crab cakes are, I live 90 minutes away and I’ve done the 3 hour round trip to get them. I’m sure their other menu items that are more typical for a pizza place are good too, but I’ve never tried them. I heard about the crab cakes, tried them and haven’t looked at the rest of the menu since!

Posted by Michael in Reviews
14
Oct
2013

What I did on my summer vacation… in photos

I just posted four new albums of photos. They are all a result of my summer trip to North Carolina.  Our trip was slightly disjointed with stops independent and unrelated stops in more than a half dozen cities spanning three states. As a result, the photos are broken out into separate albums.

Our vacation was primarily based around visiting cousins on both of sides of my dad’s family (the Torettas and the Gattis) who live in North Carolina. Photos from the Raleigh-Durham and Pinehurst areas are right here.

After leaving North Carolina, we stopped in Charlottesville, Virginia and visited Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello and James Madison’s Montpelier. Photos from that part of our trip can be found in their own album here.

Continuing north, we stopped in Maryland to visit The Maryland State Barbecue Championship and Festival in Bel Air and the Havre de Grace Seafood festival. Between sampling the amazing food at each festival I took photos that you can view here.

Our final stop was in Rising Sun, Maryland to visit the Plumpton Park Zoo. Besides visiting this cool little country zoo, we also stopped and visited the dairy that makes the amazing ice cream that we found at the seafood festival. The Rising Sun photo are here.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
28
Sep
2013

Conowingo Dam Tour Photos

Conowingo DamMy family and I have been driving over the Conowingo Dam coming and going from my uncle’s house for many years. I never knew too much about it. While at the Havre de Grace seafood festival we signed a petition in support of the relicensing of the dam. As a result we were notified about an open house and tour being held down there. It was a fun day and the tour was extremely interesting. I’d never been inside a hydro electric plant before and really knew very little about the history or workings of the Conowingo plant.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
04
Sep
2009

Western Maryland & West Virginia photos

Western MD Railroad

I just added 3 new photo albums. They are all from my trip to Western Maryland and West Virginia. We visited the Spruce Forest Artisan Village & Penn Alps restaurant. The bulk of our trip was spent in Frostburg & Cumberland, where we took a ride on the Western maryland Scenic Railroad. On the way home we spent 2 days in Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry. It was a fun couple of days. It was nice to send time in some very old, very small towns for a change and Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park is one of the most interesting NPS sites I’ve been to.

Posted by Michael in Life, Photography, Site Updates