Memorial Day Weekend 2012: Maryland and Pennsylvania

This past Memorial Day weekend I drove from Washington, D.C. to Frederick, Maryland, stayed a couple of days near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then drove to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania before boarding a train bound for New York City.

Frederick, Maryland is a quaint, historic town in north-central Maryland. The downtown is walkable and compact with an old Europe flavor. We strolled along Carroll Creek Linear Park, which was renovated in 2006 and features pedestrian bridges, water fountains, housing and restaurants along the creek.

Frederick is a great place to spend a day or a weekend given its easy proximity to the nation's capital.

Here are photos of Frederick.



Next we headed up to stay with friends at a golf course community near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Penn National Golf Course is located in the southwestern PA community of Fayetteville. If you really want to see the controversial natural gas boom in the United States, I suggest visiting this part of Pennsylvania. There are above-ground pipelines under construction that burrow their way through pristine farmland, really disrupting the natural beauty of this area. There are enormous environmental and public health consequences to natural gas fracking, storage and distribution that tend to get overlooked in the rush to build more wells and pipelines. That is why strong government oversight and regulation of the natural gas industry is so important.

Here are photos from Penn National Golf Course in Fayetteville.



After a couple of days we drove up to the state capital of Harrisburg on the east bank of the Susquehanna River. I took Amtrak's Keystone Service, which departs from the Harrisburg Transportation Center along 195 miles of track to Pennsylvania Station in New York City via 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. The historic rail station opened in 1887 and was renovated in 1905 and 1986. There were recent security improvements put in place that were funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Here are photos of the Harrisburg Transportation Center.