Baltimore, MD

Apologies to Raindancer as he did not make this trip. We will, however, take him with us in about a week when our next motorcycle adventure will begin. The present trip began in Calgary where we attended the first birthday of a very special young lady, our granddaughter Teagan. It is hard to believe a year has gone by since her birth.

We then flew to Baltimore via Toronto. We have been here for a couple of days and are using the Baltimore-Washington airport area as our home base while we explore the capital of the USA and, more importantly, the Smithsonian Institute.

We have found the train system to be very user friendly and the hotel provides a free shuttle to the train station and airport any time we want. It is around 1/2 hour into DC via commuter train.

Yesterday, May 17, we toured the Museum of Natural History. Their Human Origins section was particularly well done with excellent fossil reconstructions. Also an interesting archeological investigation of Jamestown, the original American Colonial settlement. Check out the syphylitic skull (maybe we should not have included it so close to the US Capitol Building picture)!

Today we took a bus tour of the Washington city core and toured the Air and Space Museum. An Apollo command module complete with re-entry scorch marks and the Spirit of St. Louis were just some of the attractions. There have been lots of school kids everywhere we have gone. There is so much to see it must be one of the highlights for them.

Tomorrow we plan to go back on the train to Washington for our final day and tour the Museum of American History. I mean, Archie Bunker's chair and Fonzies jacket are not to be misssd!

We have see a real variety of weather - sun, drizzle and heavy rain.