We are not dead

Hi kids!

We are not dead! It's been so long since I was able to write you I
suppose you figured we were dead but we aren't. We sailed from
Atlantic City to another town in New Jersey, Cape May, and my phone
died. With no phone I couldn't update the blog or call anyone so we
had to just sail on.

We sailed up the Delaware Bay and through a big canal (it was almost
twenty miles long!) into the Chesapeake Bay. We went to a city called
Baltimore. This was the town where the Colts used to play football
until they were abandoned in the middle of the night by the traitorous
club owners but don't get me started about THAT.

This is also the city where Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that
later became our national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.

Our country was in a war with England at the time, 1812. We got in a
war because they used to kidnap Americans into their ships to be
sailors for them. Needless to say the Americans weren't too
'impressed' with this idea. (Get it? Kidnapping people to be sailors
is called 'impressing' them. It's true. You can look it up. )

The dirty rotten English managed to invade America and burn
Washington, DC, during that war. (Do you know what 'DC' stands for?
Da Capital, that's what.) They were up in Baltimore attacking there
next. Mr. Key was watching the ruckus all day and when he got up the
next day and saw the flag still flying over the fort in this picture,
he knew the dirty rotten Englishmen had been kicked out. He was so
happy he wrote a poem, being a man of unbridled passions. He published
it in a newspaper, people started singing it (to the tune of a
popular drinking song of the time) and eventually the government made
it the national anthem.

We hung out in Baltimore for a couple days getting my phone fixed,
visiting friends and resting up. Now we have sailed on and the next
update will be from the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Be good, kids,
and make sure you tell the teacher how much you enjoy being her
student since she's the greatest teacher you've ever had, pretty close.