Was up and about pretty early this morning. A beautiful, sunny and a little later, warm, day to be outside. So it was a perfect day to head back into southern Pennsylvania and visit the battle field of Gettysburg. A major battle during the middle of the Civil War, it was interesting to see the place my junior high and high school teachers had talked so much about.

    Having only a portion of one day, and such a large physical area as well as large body of information to deal with, I opted to tour the main park building and museum and take a 2 hour narrated bus tour of the battlefield. It turned out to be just the right amount of mental and visible stimulation with out turning my whole mind to mush.

    I'm going to leave a lot of the discussion of it until later as I took quite a few pictures today and I don't want to go over the same thing more than once. So perhaps tomorrow or the day after for the rest of this.

   As far as the photos below.... these are a few from yesterday when a good friend of mine, Terri, and I drove over to Baltimore and spent the day checking out parts of the city as well as a few other areas around the city.

We started the day by stopping for brunch at a small cafe located in what had once been an old textile mill. After eating a very nice meal and drinking way to many cups of tea and coffee we decided to hike up a trail located along the stream the mill had been located on. This part of the mill appeared to have once been the location of the water wheel that supplied power to the mill.

A spur line of the B & O railroad ran out to the mill and once used this quaint little bridge to cross the river. At least part of the right-of-way is now being used as a hiking/biking trail.

Up river at what was most likely the location of the mill pond dam were these two sets of geared gate openers. It looked to me like they were most likely used to control the level of the mill pond behind the dam.

A beautiful morning to be out walking in the woods. Some areas are just spectacular, while others, like this, are very pretty but still have a ways to go.

A nice set of rapids on the river.

Once in the city we made our way to the 'Inner Harbor' area where this old Coast Guard Light Ship had been docked. Once anchored at the mouth of the harbor it would of shown boats at sea the location of the entrance. I would imagine that it was replaced by a large anchored light buoy. Just as effective, a lot cheaper to run, but a lot less romantic. But then, I never had to stand duty on a light ship, which was usually 2 weeks on and then 2 weeks off. Not a great time if it was your to weeks to be on the boat.

Not sure if this is actually a light house or not, just because it is so far inland from the harbor mouth. It could be some type of channel light as it is the correct color, but I don't know for sure and it surprised me to see it where it was.

We walked a long ways out to Fort McHenry. This was the fort that Frances Scott Keys was watching as the British Fleet bombarded it for more than 24 hours during the War of 1812. At the end of the bombardment, in which more than 1,700 shots were fired by the British, Keys could still see that the stars and stripes were still flying 'oer the ramparts' in defiance of the British assault. It was at that moment that he penned a poem that would become our national anthem, 'The Star Spangled Banner'. A version of our flag has flown over this fort every since that war.

The main reason the fort was able to resist the British invasion was two sets of cannons located on each side of the hill fronting the fort. The ammunition of choice for these guns were 36 lb iron cannon balls that were heated red hot before being fired at the ships out in the harbor. Of interest to me was the fact that they were aimed at a nearly level angle so that the hot cannon ball would actually skip across the top of the water like a stone before striking the side of the ship at the waterline or maybe even slightly below. Able to punch through more than 42 inches of solid oak in a ship nearly two miles away, the cannon ball would create a lethal batch of wood splinters when going through the wood sides, as well as possibly lighting the boat on fire or blowing it up if it lodged itself into a flammable or explosive location once inside the ship. Another interesting fact was that each gun crew had a ready supply of cut sod at each gun. After the powder pack was placed in the muzzel of the gun a square of sod was then rammed home on top of it before the 'hot shot' was dropped in and rammed home. This cushion of sod gave the crew enough time to move the gun forward and sight it as needed before it went off.

These guns were also there at the fort but they didn't get there until much later in time. I believe they were installed around the time of the Civil War, but I don't think they were ever fired during that conflict.

Just inside the forts main gate was this entance to a protected bunker where non-combatants could seek shelter during a bombardment. I think the light was really neat looking.

Extra cannons located next to the powder magazine.

Inside the main powder magazine. This large building had 14 foot thick walls and ceilings made of brick, concrete and soil. After all of that protection, the volume left over for storage is less than 10% of the total building envelope. Guess it's better than being blown up.

One of the vent holes in one of the cells inside the forts Brig. (jail)