U.S. Naval Academy

On Thursday we had plans to visit Brandon in his new home (between D.C. and Baltimore).  He ended up having to take a conference call in the early afternoon, so we found ourselves with a few hours to kill before we could head to his house.  We didn't have enough time to fight the traffic of D.C., so Barb suggested that we go to Annapolis and tour the Naval Academy.  What struck me as we drove through Annapolis was how beautiful the city was.  We may need to go back one year and spend a little more time in the downtown area.  We reached the Naval Academy without incident.  Since this was a spur-of-the-moment trip, we did not have reservations for a guided tour and those were full.  We ended up doing a self-guided tour using the map given to us in the Visitor's Center.

 The first stop on the tour was the sports complex.  Olivia was impressed by the large pool.

Next up was Dahlgren Hall- a large space where various social event are held.

 We were not able to go into Bancroft Hall- the largest dormitory in the country, but we still took a picture of it.

 Our last stop was the chapel.  This was my favorite.  There were beautiful stained glass windows all around the chapel, and many depicted different scenes from the Bible.  What was neat was that all of the Bible scenes on the stained glass pertained to the sea (because this is the Naval Academy).  We saw windows of Noah, Moses parting the Red Sea, Jonah, Jesus walking on water, and so on.  I really never realized that there were that many "water" stories in the Bible- but there are.  I pointed out the trend to Olivia and she joined me in identifying the Bible story.  She did pretty good.  Her Sunday School teacher would be proud.  I for one enjoyed our little tour of the Naval Academy.  It is a beautiful campus.