For Halloween Weekend of 2020 we originally planned to go to Salem, Massachusetts for a spooky-good time. As everyone knows, covid/coronavirus hit the world in 2020 as well. So, instead of flying to Boston and having to take a covid test just to get into the state, we cut our flight in half and stopped in Baltimore for our short weekend excursion. We flew out on Thursday afternoon, picked up our rental car, and then headed to Delaware.
Now, you may be asking why go to Maryland and Delaware. Well, simply because neither of us had been to either state before.
We stopped in Dover, the capital city of Delaware, for the night after having dinner at a nice little Italian place called Franco’s Pizza & Pasta.
The next morning our first stop was Old Dover which is an area around the original downtown and state capitol building. We had a tour booked that began at the John Bell House.
The tour was mostly around The Green but we did learn a lot about Dover during the time that the United States Constitution was ratified. One example was that the biggest reason Delaware became the first state was because of its proximity to Philadelphia which was where delegates from all of the states were meeting to write the U.S. Constitution. The delegates from Delaware were able to take the news back to Dover quicker than anyone else and get the approval to ratify the Constitution.
Here are some highlights from the tour.
Shortly after the tour we were able to go into the Old State House. It was the state’s capitol building from 1792 until 1932 and even served as the county courthouse for a time.
We wanted to go to the current state capitol building but it was not open to the public due to covid restrictions. Oh well, hopefully some other time.
Our next stop wasn’t far from there but first we decided to get some breakfast. We settled on getting some croissants and some other pastries from La Baguette Bakery and Catering not far from The Green. We also had our first taste of Boylan Cane Sugar Soda, which I quite enjoyed and have purchased a few times since then.
Near there was the Johnson Victrola Museum. The Victrola was a popular horn phonograph record player that was produced starting in 1906. The Victor Talking Machine Company helped make this type of early record player both popular and affordable. The founder of the company lived in Dover for a time which is why the museum is there. You may recognize something in one of the pictures as well, and, yes, this company did later become RCA.
The museum was definitely a neat little place worth seeing if you are in the area. I didn’t know anything about the Victrola beforehand but it was still quite interesting to see the devices that were basically at the forefront of the technology used to listen to recorded music, speeches, books, and readings. I’m sure just about everyone listens to recorded music or other media on some kind of device today so you might find this little museum to be as fascinating as I did.
Our next stop was not too far away. Dover has a racetrack called the Dover International Speedway. Now, I’m not exactly a NASCAR fan or anything but I did watch some races with my dad a long time ago and I knew there was something at the track that would fascinate Andrea. If you haven’t seen him before, I introduce to you “Miles the Monster” so named because the nickname of the track is The Monster Mile.
It was pretty neat to see in person finally. Yes, that is a full size NASCAR race car in its hand.
A short drive from there is the Dover Air Force Base which has a museum called the Air Mobility Command Museum. There are a lot of large aircraft outside (that’s all we were able to see since the indoor facility was closed due to, guess what, covid). Dover Air Base has been the base for many cargo aircraft throughout its existence and many of those were on display.
I love aircraft of any type. Seeing these wonderful planes would have been a lot more enjoyable if it had not been so windy and cold that day though. But I guess that’s what should be expected for the end of October. Oh well.
From there we headed to Rehoboth Beach. Why go to a beach town in October you ask? We certainly were not planning on swimming, I assure you. One of Andrea’s work friends once went there and came back with a key chain for her so of course we had to check out the town. It was definitely a nice little place with pretty beach houses and a shopping district that lined a few blocks of a street that leads to the boardwalk. We liked it so much that we considered going there again at some point.
Finally we went down the coast into Maryland to spend the night in Ocean City. Our room even had a view of the Atlantic Ocean!
After checking into the hotel we found food at a pirate themed place called Dead Freddies. The food was pretty good and they gave you huge glasses for your drink too.
Wow, that sure was a lot for one day! The beginning of our next day was quite neat so please come back to see what went on that day as well.
Hollar if you see Us 