Today I joined my daughter's 4th grade class on a field trip to Annapolis to learn some new things about my home state and to renew the sunburn on my face.

Annapolis is a beautiful old town, full of 2 & 3 hundred year old brick homes, shiny young midshipmen, hippies from St. John's, and the best crab cakes you'll find in this world. Our tour guide, Squire Richard Hillman, dressed in authentic colonial garb (with the exceptions, he confessed, of modern shoes and undergarments to the delight of the 10 year olds) was a former mayor of Annapolis. No wonder he knew so much. I'm planning to go back on a weekend evening and hear his ghost tour.

One thing I learned today was about the history of the Maryland state flag. I had always heard that Maryland was a "neutral" state in the Civil War. The truth is that it was divided. Marylanders were killing each other in battles. About 50 years after the War's end, the different military regiments wanted to march separately in a parade under their different banners. Their wives wouldn't let them. They sewed the two flags together into what was later adopted as our state flag. It's a bury-the-hatchet flag.

I did slip away from my well-chaperoned charges long enough to purchase two crab cakes to smuggle onto the Harbor Queen for my lunch. Mmmmmmm.

If you have never been to Annapolis, put it on your bucket list. I'd be happy to offer my home as a hub of your tour plans, but my basement had a cataclysmic flood last week and I'm afraid my guest quarters are inaccessible for months to come. But I will meet you there for crab cakes and a ghost tour!