Sailing

Yesterday, Van, Vernon, Joyce, my mom and I went sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. I had bought a Google Offer for a 2 hour sailing "lesson" out of Deale, MD from the Sailing Academy. It was a gorgeous day with light winds, enough for sailing, but not enough to make it rough. It was about 62 degrees so again just about perfect for not being too hot or too cold. We had an excellent and fun captain, Angie, and I learned a few things. We all got a chance to steer the boat and to help with the lines. Van did any of the "hard" sailing stuff with Angie. Afterwards we went for an early dinner on the other side of the marina where everyone except me had seafood - crabs either in the shell or as a cake. I have a video if I can figure out how to upload it to the blog.

Shooting Sunflowers

Pam and I went shooting sunflowers today in Hess, Maryland.  Hess is way out Jarrettsville Pike, out past Loch Raven Reservoir and 5 corners.  We got a tip about this place from a friend of Pam's, who had planned to go out herself to take pictures with some models, but could not get any lined up in time.  So, Pam and I decided to go out anyway.  It was a gamble.  There was a 60% chance of rain and we drove through a doozie of a thunderstorm in Baltimore to get out there.  However, it was not raining when we got out to Hess.  It unfortunately rained on and off after we got out of the car and were snapping a few pictures.  The sunflower field is a private farm across from a Royal Farms store. There was some parking off the side of the road and it attracted quite a few people for picture snapping.  Below are some of my pictures.  More pictures can be seen at my photostream on Flickr.  Pam will be uploading some her own pictures soon.  You can see her pictures on her photostream.

Kayaking at Big Pool

Pam and I went kayaking Saturday for the 2nd time in our new kayaks. We went up to Fort Frederick State Park in an area called Big Pool, Maryland - obviously named after the water body we were in, named "Big Pool". It is a long narrow lake between the C&O canal and the Potomac River. We were out for 4 hours.

We explored a side creek and found a flock of geese way back in the woods. No pictures .... Sorry. We've decided that these were the mythical "Forest Geese", so perhaps we wouldn't have been able to get their picture anyway. We chased them all the way up the creek until they ran out of water, at which point they scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the underbrush.

On the side of the lake I found these blue dragonflies hanging out near to the surface of the water. I wasn't able to see their wings with my eyes, but the camera was able to stop the action just fine.

There were LOTS of turtles. Unfortunately, we did not get very good pictures. We had the waterproof camera with us and it is not the best at zooming in, especially on small subjects from a moving base. They were quite skittish and slipped into the water whenever we got close. However, Pam did manage to catch a little one - she just floated up next to him and grabbed him with her bare hands. Perhaps he was too young to know any better. Pam really wanted to bring him home with us, but we had no way of getting him there. He was VERY cute.

 

Vandals

Don't worry. Nothing bad happened. I just stumbled across this little tidbit on the Internet today and thought it worthy of sharing in the blog.

Have you ever wondered where the term vandalism comes from?

Around 439 AD, there was an East Germanic tribe called the Vandals, who under king Genseric formed a kingdom in North Africa, around the area that is now Tunisia. Part of this kingdom included an area that was claimed by Rome - the Roman Africa province. In 455, the Vandals sacked the city of Rome, leaving a great deal of destruction in their wake. The north Africa Vandal kingdom was only held for about 100 years at which point, in the Vandalic War (533-4), Justinian I re-siezed control for the Eastern Roman Empire.

Early Pro-Roman historians classified the Vandals, as, I suppose, any culture that was not Roman, barbarians for their sacking and looting of Rome. While the Vandals destruction of Roman antiquities was likely no more destructive than other invaders of the time, the Vandals were often blamed for Rome's downfall.

So, the Vandals got a bad rep and a bad rap. But it wasn't until much later (1794) that the term "vandalisme" was coined by Henri Grégoire to describe the destruction of artwork following the French Revolution. The term quickly swept into public use across Europe and - as we well know - is still used to this day to describe wanton or useless destruction of property.

Information gathered from Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge)

 

Magic

From a Chipotle bag:

"Recycling turns things into other things. Which is like Magic."

Tuckernuck Island

Under the sub-heading of "What Did Van Learn Today?", I have discovered information about an interesting little island - Tuckernuck Island, off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. What got me looking up information was this quip on the inside of a Nantucket Nectars bottlecap:

"During a storm, the last remaining year-round resident of Tuckernuck Island buried himself to survive, and did."

Well ... How did he accomplish that? Coffin perhaps? He would have needed to breathe. How did he then dig himself up again?

Having never been to Nantucket, I asked myself what more I could learn about Tuckernuck Island.

According to The Fount of All Knowledge (Wikipedia), Tuckernuck Island is about 900 acres and has around 35 vacation homes on it. No more year-round residents, I guess. Supposedly, the island is privately owned by the vacation home owners. It is not open to the public. Any visitors must be invited. There are no public utilities, though they do have home-made electricity (via solar cells and gas-powered generators) and running water. They also use gas for cooking. Very few cars are used on the island, however residents do use golf carts for getting around.

Several areas have either protected or endangered flora and/or fauna, including the largest concentration of Oldsquaws (Long Tailed Duck) in the Western Atlantic. Counts of over 150,000 have been recorded. The landmass is left over from the terminal moraine of the last glacial period (Wisconsin Glaciation) and still retains characteristics of moraine geology.

Image courtesy of NOAA and iNavX

Blog source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckernuck_Island

Royal Caribbean vs. Norwegian

Ok, so here's my comparison between Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas out of Baltimore and Norwegian Star out of Tampa.

Ease - RC without a doubt. Leaving out of Baltimore can't be beat for ease for us. The port in Tampa was very easy to use though once there.
Price - equivalent
Cabin - Norwegian mostly because of the excellent bathroom with a shower better than mine at home
Entertainment - up until last night I was going to say RC but Norwegian had an awesome aerialist show with no spoken words just music and acting so now I'm going to say it's a tie.
Theater - RC for better, bigger and more comfortable seating but Norwegian for having enough seats for everyone no matter how late you arrive.
Service - RC by leaps and bounds. Not that the Norwegian staff weren't nice but things just weren't quite as nice.
Food - RC for sure - both the buffet things and the regular restaurants. The Norwegian restaurant Versailles (the main free dining room) while pretty was incredibly noisy by staff and they had the disgusting habit of scrapping plates of left-over food together onto one plate till it was pilled high enough for them to deem it ready to take away. Gross.
Cleanliness - tie as both had sanitizers everywhere and encouraged people to use them.
Room Service - RC for their early morning breakfast delivery that you could order in advance.
Excursions - tie as both had plenty of options and all were very organized.
Spa - Norwegian for their private spa with indoor pool, relaxation rooms and speciality hot tubs and saunas. It did cost extra but we enjoyed the exclusivity.