The Cookie Incident
Before I get into what we did Wednesday, let me tell you about something that happened the night we got here. I was standing in the kitchen, looking around, and saw three cookies in a cookie jar. They looked like Oreo's, except they were half vanilla, half chocolate. I almost always sneak a cookie when I can, so I took off the lid and grabbed one. I bit off half of the cookie and it was a bit soft, as if it had sat in the jar too long. Although it wasn't very sweet, I finished off the cookie and then enjoyed the rest of the evening with everyone.
Fast-forward to last night, when I saw the same cookie jar on the kitchen counter. The two remaining cookies were in there, but with something piled on top of them. My stomach sank. In the jar with the cookies were several Greenies, dog treats shaped like oversized green toothbrushes.
"Um, why are Greenies in there with those cookies?" I asked.
Ben's gramma got a concerned look on her face. "Mark, you didn't eat one of the cookies, did you?"
"Um, yes. The night we got here."
"Mark, around here, you really should ask before you eat something," she said.
Long story short (I know, too late), to start off our trip I had eaten a dog cookie. No wonder it had seemed a little stale, and not particularly tasty. It would explain, however, why I was so interested in the gourmet dog bakery section of a store called "Yuppy Puppy" in Ocean View.
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Big Fish, Little Fish, Swimming in the Water
Yesterday, we just hung out here at Grandpop's and Gramma's house for about the first half of the day. Gramma wasn't feeling well, and said it was fine with her if we went out without her.
The remaining four of us went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Ben loved the fish. Each viewing tank had a small step for little kids to use for a better view. That was Ben's favorite way to look at the fish.
The first room was built around and over a large open tank with lots of different types of rays -- sting rays, manta rays, and many others I can't remember. They looked like they were flying through the water, and Ben liked to watch them. There also was a green sea turtle, but because of an infection, she was missing her front left flipper. Small hammerheads and other small sharks swam around the tank. We had to lift Ben up for him to peer over the railing at them -- a move I wasn't crazy about because seeing him plop in there would at the very least ruin our day and his.
We next saw a large tank with large sharks of all kinds. Ben just called them all sharks, which he tended to do with all large fish for the rest of the day. Besides fish, though, we saw a number of colorful frogs, lizards, a rain forest with exotic birds, and a whale skeleton. It's amazing how much the whale's flipper bones look like human hands.
Ben loved the Puffins. At first he called them "pengens," but by the time we left that area, I had him calling them by the right name. He sounded like he was saying "persons" with a British accent, but it was the right idea.
The dolphin show was cancelled for the day, but we still got to go watch the dolphins swimming around and playing with various toys. By that time, we'd been at the aquarium about two and a half hours, so Ben had pretty much run out of energy and the "wow" factor was gone. He was a trooper though, and had fun with Grandpops in the gift shop.
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Baltimore has Crabs
Maybe you've seen or heard about the cows all over Chicago? They are actual-size sculptures all over the city, painted with polk-dots, or paisley, or a firefighter's uniform. Just about anything you can imagine, they've been painted to resemble. Even that quilt your grandmother made for you. The cows have been on tour, and we happened to see them "live" in San Antonio a few years ago.
Baltimore, however, has crabs, and they are much larger than life. The Chesapeake Bay area is know for its blue crabs, and these sculptures depict the crabs standing up with all their legs extended straight out. Some were simply painted, while some were encrusted with tiny, colorful mosaic tiles. One held a harmonica above its head. The one we posed Shannon and Ben with was painted to look like the U.S. flag, and held a pearl above its head.
Downtown Baltimore, near the harbor, is a great place to see. Short canals run from the harbor to the first major street. As we walked over the bridges between brick sidewalks, we passed mostly office workers bustling about their busy daily lives. The city manages to include usual big-city tourist traps like the Hard Rock Cafe without making it look garish. If an oversized guitar atop a building qualifies.
The USCGC Taney, a retired Navy and Coast Guard cutter, served as a floating maritime museum. We left it for another visit.
Today, we're taking the boat down the Chesapeake Bay to St. Michael's, Maryland. Ben's first boat ride! Then, dinner at the Kent Island Yacht Club. Yeah, we're really roughing it on this vacation.
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