Blogs from Annapolis, Maryland, United States, North America

Duncan’s Family Camp Ground in Lothian, Maryland, proved to be a convenient place to camp while we explored Annapolis. March is still “pre-season” and while Duncan’s is open year round, the campground staff was hustling to get things in shape! Enough said about the campground! We drove through some beautiful farm land, and were at the Anapolis Visitor’s center (free parking in the adjacent garage) in less than 30 minutes. We met up with Squire Harvey, a Bronx transplant of a certain age, who guided us through the interesting narrow streets, chatting smartly about the history and architecture of Annapolis. We ogled the Governor’s Mansion, legislative chambers (each with a Tiffany skylight) in the stately State House, viewed a painting of George Washington resigning his commission, and saw the room where it all happened. Wending our ... read more

Now it is the push to get finished. I have 2 days of inspections left but several days of actual claims to write up. It is always hard at the end to take the time necessary to get everything done properly, I just want out of here. Funny because it is so exciting to start a storm but then so great to finish working. But like a supervisor said today, it is so great to go driving off for home with some money in the bank and a job behind you. So tonight Dale and I started looking more seriously at the end game here. We have a bunch of people we need to see but we also had ideas of things we wanted to do. We mapped it out and found that seeing a few ... read more

So I think I’ve written about the fact that Dale will be driving here but now he is actually on his way. For a couple of years now Dale and I have planned that we will follow the storms; he will be back up for me and I’ll work. Then we will travel after we are done working. We’d planned for Dale to come here after he got the RV and truck in shape but I was so worried about him driving alone across the country. Then I remembered that Dolly Hei has always wanted to see DC, she would be perfect. A bit about Dolly and hopefully I am not repeating myself: Dolly has been a friend since about 1979 when I helped start a food co-op that she joined. Dolly and her husband then ... read more

I am so tired, I’ve been working until the early morning hours then getting up early and starting all over again. Some days I get set several claims but most days I get 0 to 1 claim. My biggest problem is that I’m behind in writing up the estimates so I’ve had to spend lots of time doing that. Some of the claims are not large but take lots of time for the reports, just a part of the work. Other claims consist of 3 story houses with damages on every floor. I came back last night to a bunch more work, another adjust got sick and went home so I’d been given his claims. I’m able to incorporate the new claims into the appointments for this week so it will be fine and I’m here ... read more

In California we don’t have many tornados and in Central California we don’t have a ton of rain, so it is that the weather has been unnerving for me. I waited out Hurricane Irene in Fredericksburg, VA with no power and lots of wind and rain. Not real bad, I’d sat out Hurricane Ike while living in my RV in Nola. Figured that being in a motel would be a little better and it was. Moving up to Annapolis was fine, we had power and everything was open. Fine that is until Tropical Storm Lee came by to visit for a few days. It rained for about 3 days straight and the rain poured down, so hard. On one occasion I ran from my car up to my room and my clothes were soaked. I had ... read more

The sun comes up and presto magic, a new day! Claims today started across the Chesapeake Bay. I checked out of the motel and took off across the bay. What a beautiful drive, wish I’d had time to stop and take photos or just enjoy. But there was work to do. But it reminded me of other drives across other bays. My third claim was near the center of DC. Driving to the claim I went past the Washington Monument, I saw it when I drove in yesterday too. It was so thrilling to see. We were in DC several years ago as sightseers but I was just so excited to see the monument again. I finished up the DC claim and was off to the last claim, in the NW area. I had to take ... read more

For some unknown reason Travelblog no longer makes it easy to see all our 'fantastic' photos that we take so much time to include, title, write comments about, etc. on our blog. They are all there but not right along with the text. All you need to do is either scroll down about two pages or hit the page down key on your computer and 'voila' there are the rest of the pictures. We had not realized this until today when I asked Bill a question, "What does our blog look like to people who subscribe?" We Googled ourselves and were dismayed to see that only two of the pictures of the Puppet Museum were visible until we hunted DOWN the page and found them all sitting there virtually hidden from view. So, if you ... read more

Nous avons eu un certain répit de quelques jours de la haute humidité et des températures accablantes dans les 90 +. Dès cette fin de semaine, ces mêmes températures sont à nouveau avec nous. La Baie de Chesapeake est l’un des plus beaux plans d’eau que nous ayons eu la chance de naviguer avec ses multiples rivières et ses ruisseaux qui s’y déversent donnant place à des baies assurant pleine protection. Yes, Chesapeake Bay could be monstrous when high winds blows from the South or North, but since we left Hampton, we had very calm and enjoyable seas. We did some lovely anchorages with a complete change of sceneries each time, some with lovely properties surrounding us, other in the wild with just the flies with us, and even in farming ground with the nice smell ... read more