Two full days for us (20th and 21st) here in Solomons Maryland. Day one we went and visited the Calvert Marine Museum. Very cool museum with lots of different things to see. Lots of very nice aquariums which I always love, and a fully restored lighthouse with lots of history about it's use before it was de-commissioned and replaced with a piling style marker. We really enjoyed the Museum and spent a good part of the day there.
Afterwards we stopped at the West Marine for a few things, and then went out for a nice dinner. Solomons are a pretty busy area, lots going on even though this is largely the off season here.
Next day was Aria's 12th Birthday! We managed to keep it a secret and surprised her with a seaplane flight. We had been looking for possible flight options where we were going to be, and Ready 9 was close to where we were planning to stay, so we booked a flight for Monday. Also it happened to be sea planes which is arguably even cooler than a regular flight.
This ended up being a highlight of the trip so far. We had a wonderful time and our pilot Chris was very professional and took us around for a tour of the area we were staying and had sailed past on the way in which was super amazing. I really love flying, the perspective from the air is just amazing and Aria really seemed to enjoy it as much as we'd hoped.
Solomons is a neat area, and we got to fly over the nuclear plant, a big LNG shipping station, and through some of the Petuxant Military air space as well. The military air base here apparently does a lot of air training and testing and we can atest to that with the amount of fighter jets and helicopters we saw flying around the area. We also did a couple of circles around Solomons Island where we had the boat, and it was super fun to see the area we were staying and had the boat at dock from the air.
Another big highlight form the flight was doing a couple of landing/takeoffs on the water, which as a seaplane is a thing you can do. It all happens a little bit faster than sailing! Super cool experience.
Aria also got to take the yoke for a bit and pilot the plane. It's such a cool experience and I'm glad she got a chance to feel the controls on a small plane like this.
Technically I guess this plane would be an amphibious floatplane, as it can both land on land or water as it has retractible wheels. It was a wonderful trip and we learned lots of history about the area as well, which was also great.
I hadn't realized this, but the Patuxent River is where the British forces went up and then marched on Washington, ultimately burning down the White House. It's something we all know about as Canadian's (ultimately identifying as British when we do), but I hand't really ever thought about how or where it had actually happened. I guess at the time the British had sent decoys up the Potomac River and towards Baltimore, which the US forces fell for, largely opening up the path to Washington DC through Patuxent River.
After our flight we did a large provisioning run, and got a propane refill. We got everything back to the boat and stowed away while Aria spent the evening talking to family back home. Our dinner plans got spoiled by restaurants being closed on Monday (our fault for not checking!), but we made some nachos back on the boat in the end. It was a nice evening and we started a new anime series (Frieren Beyond Journey`s End). Great end to a great day.
