Today, I had to drive up to Carroll Community College for a couple of meetings. I had never driven there before so I didn't really know what to expect. I decided to take 97 North off of 70 and the views were amazing -- hills with a panoramic sky, colorful flowers blooming from large bushes and trees, huge houses, sprawling corn fields, historic barns, and so much more. At times, I was the only car on the one-lane road. When that happened, I felt like I was in my own secret world.

The only drawback is that they're doing some roadwork on part of 97, which means that it was down to one lane for both sides combined, so I had to sit and wait for 10 minutes as they let the cars from the other side of the road pass. I took the photo above while waiting on my way back.

It took a while, but I'm finally ready to begin posting on a regular basis again. This blog won't be as confined as some of the others I've had in the past. I hope to write more about things I encounter in my every day life that can be helpful, stupid, confusing, or even somewhat entertaining.

Last night I went on my first ghost tour in about a year. I decided that in my 30s that I would spend my birthdays with family and friends that I consider family learning stories about people who have passed and are believed to be lingering on. Ghost tours can seem kind of hokey, but I find them interesting -- especially after a couple of glasses of wine.

Frederick is a pretty decently sized town so it seemed like we spent a good amount of time walking. There were stories about places that you would expect like museums and buildings that were once jails.

But the one we heard about a private residence was a bit chilling. I won't get too far into the specifics, but basically a woman that once lived there gave birth to a baby that died shortly after and then she decided to hang herself (and died) a few days later. The family that lives there now can sometimes hear a baby crying. When guests stayed on their third floor recently, they felt like the covers of their beds were being pulled and someone saw a dark figure resembling a woman. There was more to this story, of course, but I'm by no means trying to steal the thunder of actually going on this ghost tour.

There was also a crazy story about a man named Peter Suman who was hanged after being convicted for treason in the late 1700s in front of what is now Frederick's City Hall. There's a lot to the story, but the part that stuck out to me the most is that people working in City Hall can now sometimes see fingerprints from outside of the window on the windows of the top floor.

It's hard to tell how true some "ghost" stories are. But nothing is more "real" than experiencing something that you know just isn't "right" or something that just shouldn't be happening. I'm thinking about going to Gettsyburg next, but am not sure if I can wait until my birthday next year.