Just down the road from Lincoln’s boyhood home, we made a pit stop in Santa Claus, Indiana, “America’s Christmas Hometown.” Even though we visited on a brutally hot August day, it’s always Christmas in Santa Claus. The strip mall is called Kringle Place, home to Holiday Foods and the Santa Claus Museum. There’s Santa’s Candy Castle, and, across the street, you’ll find Lake Rudolph Campground and RV Resort. There was even a car wash covered in holiday decorations.

O! Say Can You See. In this post, we will see more from our tour of the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House in Baltimore. Flag maker Mary Pickersgill and a team of eight other women, including indentured servants, took just six weeks to sew the mammoth flag that survived the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, inspiring attorney Francis Scott Key to pen a poem that would become our national anthem.

We found a way to make the War of 1812 celebration a little nerdy with an excursion to the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, home of flag maker Mary Pickersgill, whose mother was a flag-making “rival” of Betsy Ross when both lived in Philadelphia.

Happy Birthday to George Washington. The “Father of Our Country” was born February 22, 1732.

There are lots of places with connections to George Washington, so you know we’ve encountered him on a Nerd Trip or two!

Yes, “nevermore” is a little obvious, but today is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday, and the Poe Toaster did not show at Westminster Hall. So the “official” word is that the Poe Toaster tradition has ended.

We started our trip heading to Charlottesville and the campus of the University of Virginia, historic in itself, but our real purpose was food, specifically bread ends and House Dressing, a specialty of the Cheese Shop in Williamsburg, Virginia where I went to college. I knew a sandwich shop near the UVA campus, the Take It Away Sandwich Shop, also had this “delicacy,” a tangy tub of mayonnaise and bread. After securing our tub of mayonaissey goodness, Julie and I proceeded UVA’s famous lawn (in the shadow of Mr. Jefferson’s Rotunda) for a picnic and preparation for our three days of “nerdvana.”

When people first hear about Nerd Trips, they often ask about the name and how it all got started. Throughout my life, I have always enjoyed visiting historic sites, particularly the homes of famous people, but these excursions were never an official hobby, nor did they have an official title.