MDP follower, Adam sends this pic from the Maryland House travel plaza, asking why MDP’s coverage of Frank Zappa has been so poor. We have no answer, only shame.
Last Thursday, MDP took a trip to Aberdeen to see the Orioles’ short season A team, the Aberdeen Ironbirds. The team was brought there by Cal Ripken (and his family), who grew up in the area and who is an integral part of the experience at the park. The team name is based off of the combination of Cal being the Iron Man and being an Oriole.
The ballpark, Ripken Stadium, (pictured previously here), is a great place. Every seat is close enough to the game to put you at risk of being hit by a foul ball. I have pictures of the action from inside the stadium, but they are trapped on film right now. So today we bring you this souvenir cap with the Ironbirds logo. You can note Cal’s number 8 on the tail of the plane.

This is the cannon that sits outside of the Concord Point lighthouse in Havre De Grace. It’s plaque tells the story of the man who, until captured, held the battery there against the British in the war of 1812. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Havre De Grace, it sits at the mouth of the Susquehanna river, where it meets the Chesapeake.
A full size picture of the plaque on the cannon follows:


Here’s a shot of a pass just before the train tracks go over the susquehanna river. I would like to find out how old this is becasue the size certianly implies that it was built quite a while ago.

Contributing photographer Bryan sent this picture along. It is the Edgewood train station, one of the places where Obama stopped during his train ride to DC for the inaguaration. This is the view looking at the southbound tracks towards Baltimore.

Today’s photo of Ripken stadium comes to use from MDP baseball correspondant, Bryan.
The stadium isn’t quite fulfilling the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. However, it is interesting that the team was bought by the Ripken family to fill their stadium, rather than the other way around. It is home to the Aberdeen Ironbirds, a single A affiliate of the Orioles.
The stadium is part of a complex of baseball fields, including Cal Sr’s yard, a replica of Camden Yards for youth baseball. From I-95 you can clearly see the red brick hotel which is shaped to resembe the Warehouse from Camden Yards and which is appropriately placed in right field of cal sr’s yard. It is in left field relative to ripken stadium.

I was taking a train north this past weekend and thought it might be a cool idea to take a picture of Havre de Grace looking south down the susquehana from inside the train as it crosses the river. I wanted it to be the opposite of this picture.
However, things didn’t work out so perfectly. The shot that I wanted and that I waited to capture, ended up having a post right in the middle of it. That’s just a risk you take when trying to take a picture of something while you are in a train moving at 70 MPH. So this was the second shot I took. I still like this one becasue of the support structure for the old bridge that is visible in the bottom left corner.

Today’s picture comes from contributor Adam, who offers us this shot of the Conowingo Dam. While the Dam is certainly a big factor in the Maryland landscape, it was built by a Philadelphia Company. In fact, it is a hydroelectric generating facility and the dam was built in 1928 by the Philadelphia Electric Co.
It’s seven original turbines, combined with four newer ones, produce over 500 megawatts of electricity, making it a very sizable generation facility with an ability, at peak flows, to generate 50% to 75% of the power that a 1970′s nuclear reactor could produce. The dam also creates the Conowingo Reservoir, which is the cooling pond for a nuclear power plant further upstream.
The dam iteself serves as the Susquehanna crossing for US-1, which is where this photo was taken.
Also for MDP reference, here’s a shot of the susquehanna further downstream.