Day 263 - Mt. Airy, MD

(Click any photo to enlarge.)

***Scroll down to see my offer for Red Cross donations.***

Pushing up daisies?
These are not dandelions

This was one BIG dog!  He could
easily have pushed out the window.

Today's walk needed to be about the walk, not so much the photos, because I just felt the need to get out there and really hoof it.  However, I didn't want it to be a boring walk, so I drove to Mt. Airy, parked at the Food Lion shopping center at the end of Main Street, and then took off down Main toward the historic district.

There was road construction along the way, which caused me to change sides of the road a few times, but soon I got into the downtown area.  I had walked this area before, so this time, when I got to the bottom of the hill at the railroad tracks, I turned left on Prospect.

The Castle on Prospect Avenue

That's when I saw it.  The castle.  I'd never seen anything like it here in Maryland.  It was absolutely beautiful, with a number of towers and turrets, all reflected in the lake beside it.  I suddenly remembered in the back of my mind people asking me if I had seen the castle in Mt. Airy on my previous walks there, and I had said that all I recalled were some big Victorians on that end of town.  "No," they told me, "there is a castle."  How could I have missed it?  Well, the answer to that was obvious.  I had never turned left and walked down Prospect Avenue before.

Backyard butterfly/hummingbird garden

There was no way to get a really clear shot of the castle without doing some obvious trespassing, so the photo I got was taken from under the tree at the edge of the property.  I researched "Mt. Airy Castle" when I got home, and I found two sources of information.  Both are pretty interesting reading.

Source 1  Source 2

Old Car Dealership

After walking more along Prospect, I turned left on Hill Street, hoping that it would wind around back to town.  After all, it was getting hot, and the going was uphill, not down.  I discovered that I was on a road that ended up paralleling Main Street, but on a completely different level above the rest of the town.

My reward for a good, long walk!

When I got to Sunset, I turned left, and then continued back along Main Street to my car.  At the end of my 75 minute walk, I treated myself to a Jimmie Cone.  It was a great end to a good walk.

Click on any photo to enlarge it.

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Forward me by email any receipt for an online donation made to the Red Cross for disaster relief, and I will send you a 5x7 print of your choice from any of my daily photo walks or from my website.  Offer good until September 2, 2013.

Visit my web site: camscamerashots.zenfolio.com
Follow me on Twitter: @camscamerashots
Email:  cam.miller@comcast.net

Cam's rules for the Daily Photo Walk:

1. walk every day
2. the walk must be in addition to any other planned activity for the day
3. post a photo every day
4. use whatever camera is easy and convenient for walking comfortably; always have a backup camera at the ready in case of mishaps (I use the Nikon Coolpix P7700)
5. no weather excuses
6. walk only where it is safe to do so