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So what other places were you thinking of? My mother asks over the grapefruit at breakfast.

-One day out to Port Deposit to look around. More Baker Carsley history

-How far is it?

-Around 55 miles.



After breakfast and checking e-mail she says that she is waiting to take her noon medication…waiting for what… then I notice. She is dressed the hand bag is on the dining room table. She is coming along.



One can never tell with this older generation. I am in my speed mode as I head out to the Beltway and up I-95. I am also in my cheap mode as I leave the interstate just before the toll and take the route 40 bridge across the Susquehanna only to find a $5.00 toll. Spoke to the toll booth worker as I saw no notice of a toll and was told that that way back was free.



The trip north was typical interstate motoring. Didn’t dare get off – passing White Marsh where the most recent murder took place yesterday, didn’t help any but on a interstate one must make time. Stopped at the Maryland House as a rest stop.



Mental note to photograph Ripkin Stadium.



Back roads almost getting lost to Port Deposit definitely not in the Midwest as as there were curves and and hills. Pulled into town and stopped by the river to make a few snaps. A mixture of what a town that was a historic place having people who actually live there.

A modernish playground made of plastic in an area known for granite.



There were two kids throwing rocks into the river. But like most places no one else. Tried it incorporate the playground and the town. The railway and the other street furniture.





My mother remembered none of this – figures ah octogenarians it was only seventy years ago that she was here. She wanted to drive further into town to see if there was a giant granite wall that was falling down. The family lived above it.



And so it was in the middle of town there was a granite wall still being fixed with a tasteful bed and breakfast in its wake, what historic district worth its salt doesn’t have a bed and breakfast. Above the granite there were two houses. Some snaps and a wander further in the village and out the other side where I stopped to photograph a tank outside the legion hall then back into town to photograph a mill in ruins but also a truck with Jesus is the answer above the windscreen. Some formal images mixing street signage an old building and a newer one.



Was now in slow mode and since my mother’s back was fine we took the long way back route 1 crossing over the Conowingo Dam –me desperately looking for a place to stop to photograph. There was no place on the bridge and for most of the way back there were few places to pull off.



A much nicer ride, slower as the road curved so much – and I made a diversion even off Route 1. I saw a sign saying from the Atlantic to the Appalachians and I couldn’t resist. Having done this and forgetting that not being in the Midwest where all the roads are more or less the same travel times as everything was at right angle, I got lost and used the setting sun to make sure that I went west and south.



The villages passed were not all that remarkable in fact I thought that I was closer to Balamer than I was due to the contemporary tackiness of the mcmansions along the Jarrettsville Pike. Those coupled with the model railway subdivisions had me thinking that I was just outside the city rather than almost playing tag with the Mason Dixon Line.



Never the less outside the villages on the road both of us enjoyed the ride. Again it was strange how time has compressed space. I asked where my father used to like to go for frozen custard remember driving forever to this shack almost to buy some only to find out that it was at Falls Road and Greenspring Avenue miles south and west of where we are.



A nice day with low winter sun not great for driving as there was glare all the way back but no matter I hadn’t seen a sky this clear since Bonne Bay. Stopped at a road house where we hit the Harford Road and it couldn’t have been a better winter day – even this non winter one has here in the Mid-Atlantic states.