Last week in the freezing weather I accompanied my daughter's 5th grade class to the Hard Bargain Farm on the eastern shores of the Potomac, right across the river from Mt. Vernon. This actual working farm is on property donated long ago by a couple who wanted the property to be used for education. These kids got just that.
We collected eggs from chickens, milked a cow, slopped pigs, fed calves, collected litter, practiced using binoculars, observed herons and woodpeckers and chickadees. The kids covered themselves with the cattails gone to seed on our river walk and the rest of the day we trailed little wispy seeds like magical fairies.

At the highest point of the property, where their old house is, you can see the Woodrow Wilson bridge, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument. Our guide showed us the best way off that hill was to roll down. What fun! I did it, choosing not to let fear of injury stop me from all the fun. Wow was I dizzy!

I’m sitting in the Hard Bean Coffee Shop in the historic Annapolis harbor, just after 7am. I’ve dropped my young diva off at St. John’s College for the first of her ten holiday shows. I’ve never been down here for coffee in the morning. It’s a different crowd: fewer tourists, more regulars.

This brick town looks pretty at Christmastime. There’s a big lighted tree in the traffic roundabout, the masts of the sailboats bobbing in the harbor behind them. Windows are hung with red-bowed wreathes. Shop windows with white lights seductively display their best dressed gift ideas. The city has covered the parking meters with festive red bags, gift wrapping free parking for the holiday shoppers. A red bow passes the window on the neck of a big yellow retriever pulling a nautical matron.







I noticed a sign posted in the window that I knew you’d want to see for tomorrow’s Santa Speedo Run. Apparently tomorrow, a battalion of scantily clad Santas will be enjoying a brisk mile jog through Annapolis’ historic district.

Although the run is at 2, registration begins two hours prior accompanied with “libations.” At 1:45, participants will “strip down and file out to the street.”

The fine print of the poster has some advice:
Obviously a Speedo-like bathing suit is required. Women, bathing suit (2-piece if possible, but not mandatory.) Holiday colors are preferred. Please, no thongs! We know you have the body to pull it off, so why prove what’s obvious? Santa hat, beard and other holiday flair at your discretion.

I hate to miss it, but perhaps some things are better left to the imagination.

My kids have been up to some fun activities. Topping the list was last weekend's Light-a-Boat Parade in Annapolis.
40 something sail and power boats went all out, decorating their boats for the holidays and sailed them in and out of Ego Alley right at the historic downtown docks of Annapolis. They entered with the Sea Scouts and even spent the night on their boat in the harbor. How fun, eh? They are on the smaller boat with the blue lights and the Santa in the fedora.

I went camping last week with my 13 year old son and three buddies of his at Tuckahoe State Park. This one picture sums up why I did it. We had so much fun without a kaper chart or strict schedule. Doesn't everything taste better when cooked over a campfire?

I had a mini-cabin with beds & AC for the grown-ups and let the boys set up a tent for themselves around the corner, just out of sight of the cabin.

Mark joined me the first evening and Mom the next. During their overlap, the three of us left the boys behind and went to the nearby Adkins Arboretum. We arrived with less than an hour before closing and the clerk in the gift shop suggested a trail with artwork installed throughout it. She warned us that some of the artwork was "a little weird." Sounded perfect.

The first artwork we mistook for pollution, perhaps an abandoned scout project? But then we figured it out. It really was cool, despite the humid heat and bugs. The giant sweaters were called "Tree Huggers." One of my favorites was a network of fine wires with crystal beads that looked a bit like a spiderweb with dewdrops, although it didn't photograph well.

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!

This top photo is by the crab wharf on Slaughter's Creek where we purchased lunch, the eastern side of Taylor's Island.

On the East Coast, you can't see the sun set over water unless you are on the eastern shore of a bay. Sunrise, although beautiful, is much more difficult to catch. How lucky for me to have spent sunset on the Eastern Shore.