This past week, I had family visiting from Ohio. It’s always so much fun seeing things through other people’s perspectives. Especially if what you are looking at is your own hometown. I’ve lived in St. Mary’s County, Maryland my whole life. Sometimes it feels like I’ve become numb to some of the sights around me.
Even some of the more beautiful places in the county had become boring to me. They have added a lot more things to do around the more popular sights over the last few years. One of the coolest things I can definitely say about our county is that it is not short of learning moments. We have a lot of museums to keep a tourist busy for weeks, let alone the few days that we had to show my family around.
We tried to do as much as we could in the morning because Southern Maryland is the middle of a heat wave! It turns out we are having a long streak of 100 degree days here and it was dangerously hot outside. That didn’t stop us though, we pushed through and saw some great things. The first day we went to go see the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland. They have plenty of historic boats and artifacts having to do with marine life around Southern Maryland.
The second day we visited the brand new Patuxent River Naval Air Museum. This museum has actually been around longer than I have. They just moved into their brand new location though and it is gorgeous! One of my favorite highlights of the museum is the Cupola taken from the Cedar Point Lighthouse. The locals are all familiar with that lighthouse because it was offshore for a long time. The water ended up claiming the house, but they brought the cupola to the museum where it has been ever since. They also have plenty of aircraft to see. My father has been an aircraft mechanic since he was 20 years old and so this is a big deal to my family.
We spent the third day at Historic St. Mary’s City. Not only is it only a few minutes from my house but it is one of my favorite places around St. Mary’s County. Nestled right next to St. Mary’s College, this historic landmark has plenty of colonial building recreated. St. Mary’s City was America’s first capital city and they even have a recreated state house that you can walk through. It is also an active archaeological dig site, so there is always more being found and created here.
I’ve always loved to visit on The Dove. I don’t know if I have any Mayflower or Jamestown ancestors, but I’ve always wanted a Dove ancestor the most. I know that I don’t because my family isn’t from here but boy would it have been cool.
Do you have cool landmarks in your town that you have avoided?