Last year, I made the overly ambitious goal to activate every POTA park in Maryland. I knew this would take years, but I really want to explore all of Maryland.

So I scraped the data from the POTA website, sorted the parks by distance from home. I created this massive TODO.org file and got to work.

I made it 10 parks in and realized that activating wildlife management zones are pretty boring. In addition, the TODO.org file was a little unmanageable.

I recently came across a handy little PDF map of all the state parks in Maryland that the park service put out. I imported it into Penly and started a little digital travel notebook to keep track of all the parks I’ve activated.

As well as this reporting activation reports to this blog, the digital notebook serves as a little creative outlet for myself. I hope this will new travel journal will give me some direction in which park I’m activating each weekend.

Without further ado, onto the activation report for US-1604 Washington Monument State Park.

# Activation Report

This park is interesting. It is not the famous Washington Monument 50 miles South. No, it is also not the Washington monument in Baltimore. This is the one in Boonesboro, MD. Where is Boonesboro, MD? Well it is where Washington Monument State Park is.

This is actually the first monument ever erected for George Washington. It was built in 1827 by the citizens of Boonesboro, MD atop of one of the summits in the South Mountain range.

The trip up to the park is a 40-mile drive from my house. I love the drive North from my house on 270. After you get out of the Germantown area, the drive becomes very green. There are some beautiful views from the highway.

It is hard to photograph these from the car, so I highly recommend taking the drive on 270 from Germantown to the border. It is gorgeous.

Just before the park, I passed through the town of Middletown. It is a pretty cute little historic town that was founded in 1767. I’ll have to take the family here some weekend and explore.

I arrived at the park shortly after leaving Middletown. As has become a new tradition for each of my activations, I forced myself to hike out 30 minutes on a trail. Then head back for a total of an hour of hiking. This park is on the Appalachian Trail, so I am excited to be able to finally say “I hiked the Appalachian Trail!” (No one tell them it was only for an hour).

I put on my pack filled with radio gear and started my hike. My first stop was to the summit to take a look at the monument. It was honestly pretty meh. The view on the other hand was incredible. Along the path up to the summit, there were signs detailing the life of George Washington.

I won’t spend any time talking about that bastard George Washington, who wore the teeth of enslaved people, who commanded a genocide of the indigenous people whose land this pile of rocks sits on. He really is the part of the grand American tradition of horrors that continue to this day.

Phew, ok. Enough of that. I’m good. So, after I checked out the monument, I hiked down the side of the mountain. When I got to the bottom of the mountain, I realized I’d made a mistake because I now needed to hike back up the mountain.

I was so glad I brought my trekking poles with me because I really needed the extra support to get back up the mountain. I was really struggling. I had to take many breaks.

This photo does not do the climb justice. It looks flat, but it had to be at least a 45 degree climb. I got it done. I had no choice. The only way back to play radio was up that mountain.

I must have looked worse for wear because when I stepped aside to let a family pass, their grandpa asked me if I was OK.

After I finally returned from to my car. I drove over to a picnic table and set up my radio. I set up the QMX with my 17’ whip. I started by trying to call CQ on SSB. I have had some luck with SSB on the QMX in past, but today, no one responded. I honestly didn’t feel like screaming into the void, so I switched to CW. I spotted myself, but didn’t get any responses on CW either.

I wanted to guarantee an activation so, I fired up FT8CN on the tablet and let the robot call CQ while I wandered a bit around the table. Hopefully it could catch some fish while I wandered.

What immediately caught my eye was a near-by tree that was surrounded by mushrooms. It looked so cool. While I was looking at the mushrooms, I heard what sounded like a cicada’s wings flapping on the pavement. Sure enough, there was a cicada being attacked by a cicada killer. Cicada killers are massive. I am so glad they only attack cicadas. Sadly I didn’t get a good shot of the brawl.

After I returned to the table, the robot was just about done making the 10 contacts needed to activate the park. I sat by and watched it make two more QSOs for a total of 12 contacts just for good measure.

Having officially activated the park, I thought I’d give CW another try. What did I have to lose?

I schedule the activation on the POTA site and called CQ. That must have did the trick. I ended up getting picked up by the reverse beacon network, and that brought on the callers.

There was quite the pile-up. I ignored the faster callers and concentrated on what I could copy.

I struggle through 3 contacts. I haven’t practiced CW in a couple of weeks, so I was a mess. I had to ask them to repeat their callsign a few times.

I barely remembered the POTA exchange, so I was pretty curt. I remembered to say GE, good evening, to the first caller, but not the others. My 55N’s were HHN’s. My sign-offs were just"TU 73 dit dit". It was a horror show.

The last contact was pretty funny. They were from Mexico, I think my first, so I did not expect a callsign that started with an X. I kept confusing it for a P.

Bless them for their patience with me because I’d say “PE2S?” and they’d say “XE2S”, then I’d say, “PE2S?” and they’d say, “XE2S”. We must have went back and forth 4 times before I facepalmed and said to myself, “DAH DIT DIT DAH? Oh shit, that’s an X”.

Despite the messy exchanges, I managed to get what I needed to log them for POTA, which is just the time and callsign.

Here’s the map of my CW contacts. I’m always so proud of these CW QSOs because CW has been such a struggle for me. It has taken me literally a year to be able to stumble through a POTA QSO.

Here’s the other contacts that FT8CN made for me. Does anyone know how to make FT8CN less automatic? It just seems to answer everyone that calls me automatically. I love stopping to smell the flowers while it makes contacts for me, but I wish it was a little more engaging.

Well that’s US-1604, Washington Monument State Park in the bag. Where to next? I don’t know. Maybe US-6383 Matapeake State Park before it gets too cold for the beach.