And We're Off!

On the road this first Saturday in May morning with a coffee, scone, Ed and Mary. Headed toward home.

Our road trip adventure began on Wednesday afternoon when Ed and I headed east on I-64 towards Baltimore to pick up our teenager-for-only-one-more-week, youngest daughter from the finish of her second year at MICA. We stopped for the night in Morgantown, WV, home of West Virginia Mountaineers and found one of those quintessential college-town hangouts for a beer and a burrito.

We had the whole next day to find our way over to Frederick, MD so we planned our first stop at Antietum National Battlefield where we spent a couple of hours recreating the sequence of  the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. It was disconcerting to wander the beautiful fields of 19th-century farms and realize that in September 1862 they were littered with 23,000 dead or wounded men. Maybe it was because it is Mother's Day weekend and I'm feeling especially sentimental toward my three children, but it made my heart ache to think of the carnage and calamity the Civil War (or any war, for that matter) caused. Those poor young soldiers, and their inconsolable mothers...

But onto happier thoughts...from there, we made our way over to Harpers Ferry, a tiny town situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers where the states of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia meet. The town is best known for John Brown's raid on the Armory in 1859 and its role in the American Civil War, but today it is a sleepy little historic burg that didn't feel terribly touristy. With a vanilla-chocolate custard swirl cone in hand, we explored the river banks and the restored streets.

We spent the night in Frederick, just outside Baltimore and dined on soft shell crabs and crab cakes at "Maryland's Best Seafood Restaurant," May's Restaurant. The next morning we were reunited with Mary at the local coffee shop -- and it felt so good. We moved a van load of furniture into her apartment for next year before wandering around Fells Point. That evening,we feasted at The Helmand, Hamid Karzai's brother's afghanistan restaurant.

And so now our day will be spent in the car, headed home. We expect to open the cattle gate to our gravel drive just as the gate opens at Churchill Downs for the running of the 137th Kentucky Derby. May the sun shine bright on all.