• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Antrim 1844 County Inn is a four-star dining and bed & breakfast experience in Taneytown, about eight miles southeast of Emmitsburg via Route 140. The accolades “elegant” and “romantic” fit to a T. The mansion has nine guest rooms, with another 13 suites and rooms in original, restored outbuildings, each with its own fireplace. The formal breakfasts feature Belgian waffles, butlers serve at the hors d’oeuvre parties, and the six-course dinners have been acclaimed in The Baltimore Sun. (30 Trevanion Road, Taneytown, tel. 410-756-6812 or 800-858-1844, www.antrim1844.com, $$$$)

Pet-friendly: Sleep Inn & Suites accepts pets, no extra charge, but you will be placed on the smoking floor. There are 79 rooms, 12 suites and one fireplace suite, an indoor pool and a fitness room. (501 Silo Hill Parkway, tel. 301-447-0044, $$)

Information

Emmitsburg doesn’t have its own visitor center, but there’s a Maryland Welcome Center just north of town on Route 15.

Emmitsburg Business & Professional Association, tel. 301-447-3110, www.emmitsburg.net, provides local news, history, events, things to do and a business directory.

Tourism Council of Frederick County, tel. 301-228-2888 or 800-999-3613, www.visitfrederick.org.

TIP: Visitors to the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton can attend mass at the Basilica at 9 am Saturday and Sunday, and at 1:30 pm Wednesday-Sunday, followed by confessions. You don’t have to be Catholic to attend, but non-Catholics do not receive Communion. Casual but modest attire is appreciated. (tel. 301-447-6606, www.setonshrine.org)

TRIVIA: Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, born in New York City in 1774, wrote of her adopted Emmitsburg countryside: “The good news of the valley and mountains covers me with joy. Be assured my heart is there and always will be.”

Westminster

Around Town

Beyond split rail fencing, sheep graze on rolling green pasture. Folks in 19th-century dress mill about farm buildings and homesteads. Small, casual groupings of fiddlers, banjo pickers, dobro and stand-up bass players are scattered about on the lawns, standing under trees or sitting at picnic tables. There are old men in starched white-collared shirts and cowboy hats, young men with ponytails, women in gingham dresses, boys in overalls. In the background, a lone guitar player sings a plaintive bluegrass ballad, amplified throughout the park. Abruptly, the relative quietude is broken by energetic shoes tapping on a piece of plywood – a couple spontaneously jumping up for some down-home clogging. Accompanying them are a pair of fiddle players who could be grandfather and grandson.

We have arrived in Westminster for the start of the annual Fiddler’s Convention at the Carroll County Farm Museum. Each June brings the best musicians in the region to vie for cash in the bluegrass and “old-timey” competitions.

It’s not quite noon and the fiddling is just getting warmed up, but the Knights of Columbus have been barbecuing for days. Big boulder-sized chunks of blackened meat sit on a metal, U-shaped pit barbecue grill that must be more than 10 feet long. Men and women work at two big slicing machines. The choices are pork, beef, ham or turkey with toppings of BBQ sauce, horseradish, mustard and mayonnaise. I heap the condiments onto a bun filled with pork and beef, and ask the men how long they’ve been cooking. One says “since Wednesday” (today is Sunday). The other laughs and says, “Oh we just threw them on this morning; waved our magic wand and they were done.” We all laugh and I order two sodas to wash down the sandwiches.

We find a shady spot under a tree and sit down to eat and listen. The sun is shining, but there’s no humidity on this beautiful Sunday afternoon and life just doesn’t seem like it could get any better.

Reluctantly, we eventually have to leave this little world, set apart from interstate traffic and suburbs. But what awaits in downtown Westminster is nearly as idyllic. Main Street