If you want a serious tour of Pittsburgh, don’t go on the Just Ducky tours. But if you want to see a little of Pittsburgh by land and by river and have some fun laughing at some corny jokes and quack-quack-quacking at people you drive past, then this is the tour for you! I enjoyed […]
boat tours
Baltimore’s Waterfront Promenade
My friend suggested Baltimore’s Waterfront Promenade as a daytrip destination earlier this year, and we’d been waiting for a weekend which we both had some free time to go explore it in its entirety — or almost in its entirety. I am still amazed that I can live within minutes of some of these daytrip […]
Mackinac Island
This is the fourth of five posts about our late summer trip to Mackinaw City and Michigan’s upper peninsula; we visited the area after bringing my son up to college in Michigan. The Victorian Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. After exploring Mackinaw City, we wanted to go over to St Ignace to explore it too. […]
The Ghost Ships of Lake Superior
This week we depart the Mid-Atlantic states for a brief journey across Michigan, which brought us all the way up to Lake Superior to see shipwrecks underwater, back down to Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island — a magical place — and then down the coast of Lake Huron to visit a few lighthouses. This post […]
A Rare Opportunity to Tour the Thomas Point Shoal LIghthouse
On the last weekend in September, my sister and I went on one of the few tours offered every year to the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse. I mean, not just a victory lap around the outside like countless folks in their boats, but get off the boat and climb up through the hatches to the […]
Eating Smith Island Cake on Smith Island
I’d heard about Maryland’s state dessert for years, but never tried it. And since the 2-day trip on the Southern Lights excursion aboard the MV Sharpes Island with Captain Jack and the afternoon visit to nearby Tangier Island (VA), I’ve wanted to visit Smith Island. I was hoping it was as cute and quaint as […]
Delaware Bay Lighthouses
Seagulls stand watch above the Miah Maull Shoal Lighhouse. Lighthouses stand as solitary sentinels signaling unseen danger — the peaks and valleys that map the geography under water. Mysterious, silent, and now lonely — almost all lighthouses are automated, and almost all are slowly deteriorating back into the waters they have protected our sailors and […]
C&O Canal at Williamsport
Most of my blogs about the C&O Canal recently have been about biking the towpath — a great way to explore the canal, but sometimes you can see more if you slow down a bit and see it on foot. That’s what we did last Sunday. I hadn’t planned on going on a day trip […]
Jet Boating the Niagara Rapids
Last summer we spent a week exploring the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake. This is part of the 6-part series of posts about that trip and the fun times we had exploring the land up north! The Niagara River flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, forming part of the border between […]
A View of Richmond from Its Canal
Another post from last summer about an often overlooked aspect of Richmond — its canals. One interesting way to experience and explore Richmond’s history is by taking a 40-minute narrated canal tour. The narrated canal cruise offers a pretty good synopsis of Richmond’s colorful history. Along the way, you’ll see a part of the canal and […]