Fort Armistead in Baltimore.
We had talked about getting married for a while. She doesn’t like big groups; actually we’re both pretty anti-social. I don’t like tradition. Neither of us are big on religion. We’re also pretty poor. So we agreed on what we felt was probably our best option – running away to Elkton for a few days and getting married at the courthouse.
And I also figured if I’m gonna be down there, I might as well go see stuff.
We knew there was a 2 day waiting period for licenses, so our first stop was the Elkton courthouse. Among the questions asked of us was whether or not we were related. Interesting.
I hadn’t been to Baltimore since I was 9 or so and I remembered really liking the aquarium. Plus I remembered the Inner Harbor area being nice, so that was my first destination. The aquarium was a lot smaller than I remembered, either that or my interest in fish has dwindled. Well to be fair, they do have more than fish. Back then, I spent a whole day there; this time I had seen everything and was quite ready to leave after just 2 hours.
A friend of Annie’s told us about some abandoned bunkers a few months earlier, so I found out how to get to them and was surprised to learn they were also in Baltimore. I wasn’t aware it was a park until we arrived – a very neglected park. Fort Armistead is in very sad shape. There are also lots of rumors and stories about the place, all of which can be found on its page. A park, especially one with military significance, would never be allowed to fall into such bad condition in New Jersey.
My next point of interest was a Civil War battlefield I’d wanted to visit for years. It was halfway across the state though, so we’d have to spend the night out that way. The next morning it was snowing off and on when we arrived at Antietam. We didn’t realize the battlefield was a self-guided car tour. It was nice, but if you have no interest in the Civil War the place is pretty boring. Even if you have an interest it might be boring. I was expecting more, but then again what can you really do with a battlefield? The cemetery at the end was my favorite part; the rest of it’s just statues and monuments.
Union soldier statue in the center of Antietam National Cemetery.
Antietam didn’t take up as much time as I had anticipated, and there was nothing else scheduled for the day, so we slowly meandered back toward Elkton. The next morning I’d be married.
So the next day came and we ate at Cracker Barrel – what I like to call The Last Lunch. We went and got married. Then we did some geocaching downtown and headed for a place which I found out sounded a lot cooler than it really was.
The biggest military gun ever built can be found at the Army Ordnance Museum.
Acres of tanks sounded pretty fun when I first read about the Ordnance Museum, and I liked the idea of hopping into them, which the article said you could do. But when we got there, there were big signs saying “Keep off the vehicles” and half of the tanks weren’t displayed because they were being repaired or kept indoors. So yeah, it was just a lot of tanks that you could look at. Fun if you like tanks I guess. Couple of big guns too. And a bomb.
3 days of war-themed stuff was enough for me. We headed home.
