Ellicott City Historic District (Main Street mill town)

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.

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.

Landmark

September 17, 1862 remains the single bloodiest day in American history -- over 22,000 casualties in about 12 hours around this small whitewashed Dunker meetinghouse. The battle's outcome gave Lincoln the opening to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. A quiet, reflective stop rather than a triumphant one.

Roadside & scenic

Annapolis's working harbor-turned-promenade: yachts idle up the narrow basin, turn around in front of a sidewalk audience, and idle back out -- hence the nickname 'Ego Alley.' It anchors the Colonial Annapolis National Historic Landmark District, with the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial at its head.