Blaze a Trail?

After leaving the Best Farm at Monocacy, I headed back toward home. I decided to stop at Catoctin Mountain Park along the way to get some stamps. I asked the Ranger if there was a short trail I could follow. I've stamped here before but really wanted to "claim" a visit. He recommended a short hike to an old site that had been used for moonshining! The path followed a small stream and there were nature trail signs along explaining the flora and fauna (if you consider insects fauna) of the area. 

This layout is based on a Creative Memories sketch from June 2021. I used the Art Nouveau collection with its earthy and leafy prints. I used a newer border maker cartridge for the left side border, but most of it was covered with photos and the brochure, unfortunately. I thought I was being clever by adding the XXX on the bottles since we are talking moonshine. 

Two Small Stops

In 2011 Eastern National produced the 25th anniversary stamps to commemorate the Passport Program. Since Jim was visiting his family I took the opportunity to make a day trip visiting Monocacy for the first time and revisiting Fort McHenry.

I debated cutting the photo in half and posting  each page separately, but there isn't much unique enough about either experience, and the visits were literally hours apart. In fact, I also visited Catoctin Mountain Park but didn't take any photos. You'll notice that there are just simple photos of each place--the sign without me near it and an establishing shot of the park. In some ways this is the epitome of a "stamp and run" layout.

The left page is another page from Forevermore Scrapbook's civil war papers--just a line of rifles across the bottom. Adding the drum and bugle to the title/unigrid area finishes the decoration. On the right I used 6x6 paper in flag colors as the base for the quintessential story of our flag. The red sticker is my admission proof (they change color every day). On my way home I mounted it on one of the passport pages so I could scrapbook it later. Journaling on that page is a silver/white pen on dark blue paper. I will say it's hard for me to find a suitable pen that writes in a fine tip and in a color light enough to see on dark cardstock. Do you have one to recommend? Comment below!