C&D Canal Museum

Attraction

A national museum devoted entirely to self-taught 'outsider' artists -- whirligigs, a giant whirligig sculpture garden, and a mirrored mosaic facade that makes it the single quirkiest museum stop in the state.

Attraction

Housed in the 1884 Mount Clare roundhouse -- birthplace of American railroading, where the B&O's first stone was laid in 1828 -- with the country's oldest and most comprehensive collection of historic locomotives under one roof.

Food

Canal-view dining in an 1780s building at the foot of the bridge.

Attraction

One of only three surviving Chesapeake Bay screw-pile 'cottage' lighthouses, moved intact to the museum's waterfront in 1975 -- visitors can climb inside a genuine 1883 hexagonal lighthouse without a boat.

Attraction

A working waterfront campus on the Miles River with the last screw-pile lighthouse on its original Bay waters (Hooper Strait Light, relocated intact) and the country's largest collection of Chesapeake Bay skipjacks and workboats.

Culture

Canal-side village of 19th-century houses under the arching Route 213 bridge; NRHP-listed south bank.