After 12 (12!!) years of being in Maryland I didn't even realize that St. Mary's City was here. C41 tells me I did. But if I once did I promptly forgot.
The point being that Sunday morning we decided to go. Q4 was still asleep (?? it was 8 am, that was crazy in itself) and we got ready, she woke up, ans we all headed out.
It takes almost two hours in the car to get there from here, but all was good except for one blueberry incident (you do NOT drop the blueberries you don't want on the floor of the car!), and we arrived by 11 am.
Q4's request was to go see the Indian village area. We went into a little home, played corn cob darts (FUN!) and I tried on clothes. Nobody else would.
Then off to the church, which was 100% reproduction, but had a gorgeous wooden barrel ceiling. The interpreter also showed us the multitude of graves around the property ... about 600 ... all unmarked.
By the church were frames of houses where they would have been, but hadn't been built up again.
We visited a barn, and then an "ordinary" where folks visiting the city (the first capital city of Maryland, thank you) would have bought dinner and spent the night (on a tick mattress with their hosts on the floor). We visited the printing press (the owner also ran an ordinary), which was cool.
We were getting very very hot, but we pressed on to the Dove, the ship brought over to facilitate the settler's trading in the colonies.
We got to watch it -- and hear it! -- shoot a cannon. It flared and boomed and smoked. We'd already left the ship and were sitting a couple of hundred feet away, but the noise still boomed through us.
C41 had told us there was food there, so we set off in search of lunch. But we couldn't find it. The school (St. Mary's College) was closed, and their were only snacky things in the gift shop. We ended up buying juice boxes, cheese sticks, finishing up bagels and cream cheese from the morning, and sharing an apple, and pulled through til we left, but it was touch and go there for a bit as low blood sugar and heat started to act upon us. I mean me.
We visited and tried on the stocks
and some trees in a small --very small-- orchard.
We visited the statehouse, a large brick building, nice and cool. Q4 was herself there
and C5 wanted her picture next to what Q4 asked if it was an "old fashioned radio"
but was really the announcement system to tell you about the statehouse.
I definitely enjoyed myself, the place was quite nice, but unlike Williamsburg or Sturbridge Village, which you could visit every year or every couple of years, St. Mary's City was somewhere to visit about once every 10 years or so.
