Return to Baltimore, 2008

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SUUSI finished up on Saturday morning and we checked out and headed back Mark's house in Rockville, MD. As we had time we took the Blue Ridge Parkway for part of the way back rather than the interstate. The views were quite nice, but the best views were when the road was overlooing a beautiful value, but there was no place to stop. The places where they could put in scenic pull off were on more gentle slopes and the trees obsucred the views of the valley below. The road was limited access, but only two lane (and without the visibility requirements for modern interstates).	=0=
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After an hour or so, we went back to the interstate as while it was a pretty drive, it was slower and the scenery was pretty similar along the way.	=0=
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Sunday morning we had breakfast and then all set out for Baltimore, just a bit beyond the B.W.I. (Baltimore Washington International) Airport which I was flying out of. We took the Duck Tour of Baltimore. They are in most coastal cities and are tours in the old WWII amphibous vehicles. Basically they are the standard 2.5 ton truck from that era (and when I was a soldier as well as far as I can tell) but with a boat hull attached and propellor and seals added. Above you can see one. We drove around Baltimore at first and it was pretty fun. We all had duck whistles (?) which made a duck like sound and quacked at passerbys while waving and tried to get them to wave back. Here is Eric with his quacker. When it was driving you were pretty high above the road (a little higher than a school bus, say), but once it was in the water you weren't that high above the water as you can see above.	=0=
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I took several pictures from the harbor tour in the duck (above, here, and below). The Baltimore harbor has several nautical museums in ships that people can tour. There is a WWII submariine and an old navy tall ship.	=0=
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After the Duck Tour, there wasn't really enough time to have lunch, so we walked around the harbor area(where the duck tour left from) and I got some better pictures of the WWII sub and tall ship. They also had a freighter, the Cheaspeake, but it wasn't as interesting to me. Then it really started raining hard so we walked back to the car in the rain and headed to the airport.	=0=