Stellar Vacation Day

Each half year, I allot one of my initiatives to visiting places I've not been before, close enough to complete the round trip in a day.  As I plan the subsequent six months every June and December, this particular initiative invariably has that satisfying completion check mark and renewal of something I want to include among my projects for the following half-year.

Covid-19 made this more of a challenge this cycle, limiting the number of places open.  I settled on my three, starting with the Ladew Topiary Gardens about 60 miles into Maryland.  While not designed as micro-vacations, they usually fulfill that purpose, starting with a 20oz container of WaWa coffee, which happened to be only $1 at their promotional price.  I could have gotten a Hoagie for $5 as their periodic Hoagiefest makes this a best buy, but for the purposes of a day trip to a new place, having lunch at a local option adds to the respite.  Often I travel to Baltimore the first Shabbos in November for services at Beth Tfiloh where I can briefly admire multicolored leaves along the banks of the Susquehanna as I cross the Tydings Bridge.  This time I, though traveling two weeks earlier, I would be on less trafficked road so foliage watching became a secondary item of interest.  Turned out the the leaves were first starting to change colors, far from peak season, but some.

Travel, even to places not far but unfamiliar, changes perspective. These were smaller places, not truly rural as the great expanses of the midwest or Rockies but a lot less densely populated than where I usually hang out.  Churchville, Jarrettsville, Forest Hill, the slightly larger Bel Air.  There were a lot of McMansions in a number of pockets along the non-highway roads suggesting that there were places around that either offered entrepreneurial opportunity or places to generate significant salaries.  Towns had small shops as well as consumer locations for top retail corporations.  This being prime election season, the yard signs were predominantly for different national candidates than we find around my neighborhood, yet the reason why seemed far from obvious.  I didn't meet any deplorables.  Even the two Hells Angels types with their Harleys parked in a lot where I checked out the basement restaurant bar and hastened out, gave me a nod, despite my Proud Democrat baseball cap.  

I assume they have some fear of loss, maybe their farm, maybe the dominance of their faith, maybe resentment of the people in those McMansions that did not have similar campaign yard signs. While the travel shows all say you get to meet new people, and that's probably true of cruising or national parks, on my day trip the sensory input is nearly entirely visual, virtually no auditory.  Curious about the places I drove around or parked at?  For sure.  But a curiosity not really satisfied.

The Ladew Topiary defined my trip.  Well worth the $10 senior admission.  I like gardens, from the showcases like Longwood or Missouri Botanical Gardens to the more random like Bartram's.  This fell in-between, far from professionally manicured but maintained with the owner's legacy.  Even amid Covid, which closed all the buildings, there was a mixture of defined horticulture and fields of wildflowers.  Getting a little older, I took my time, sat down as the benches became available, looked at the site map as I started but just wandered paths or deviated from them as the surroundings become more familiar.  Nice place to visit.

It's wine country as well.  Boordy dominates but there are others.  My cell phone enabled me to figure out which if any were open for tastings, settling on Harford Winery not far from the Topiary and in my return direction.  For a nominal tasting fee, I selected six ounce or so portions from a printed menu, ventured to an isolated round table, where they brought me my choices on a tray with six plastic cups.

Usually I like chatting with the staff about their wines, production, the surrounding area.  Wineries are partly about the final product but also about the people who create the product or live in the area.  Wine was good to sip.  Precovid, wineries would serve in logo stem glasses most of the time.  I bought one when I paid for the tasting.  Replaces one from New Jersey that I recently broke.

I didn't want to return on I-95 with a toll so I asked the GPS if there was a free alternative not too far out of the way.  I also wanted some lunch, after checking a couple of places pre-winery.  Settled for WaWa Hoagiefest and a large Blizzard from DQ across the street.

Rather pleasant drive home, one I've done before, following Route 1 over the Conowingo Dam, then into Pennsylvania.  Rather than take Route 1 all the way home, I exited onto one of the roads that usually intersects my path to and from Lancaster, mainly to see where that road followed south of my customary trajectory.  Not a lot to see.  Pennsylvania foliage slightly farther along than Maryland's but not by much.  Yet there emerged a curiosity about where I had been, satisfied with a few searches of Wikipedia, both for the towns I visited and for the routes that I drove along.

Vacations, even day trips, make a statement about me.  I like to be in control of what I do.  Minimum agenda, with some diversions of route, where to eat, an unsuccessful attempt to see if the Harford Community College Bookstore had a coffee mug to add to my collection.  The opposition candidate signs did not phase me.  Just one of the features of being in a foreign country.  The mostly amorphous but pleasurable nature of the day made me more aware of why I probably won't return to cruising and why I enjoyed the three I've taken so much.  With cruises, the appointments are minimal, other than port visits.  Even at a port visit, I can take the cruise tour or see the site on my own, depending on the nature of the stop.  While on the ship, I go to the activities I want, take what strikes me as most desirable from the buffet, and feel a little put off when a staff member does for me what I could capably do myself.  Once the buffet yields to mandatory sit-down service and a line forms or reservations are needed for things that I would previously just get up and do without a lot of prior planning, the autonomy and independence disappear.  That's what makes a vacation, and what made this brief minitour of central Maryland such a stellar experience.