Historic Ellicott City

Recently, Dakota was invited to a birthday party that was held in a pottery shop. The invitation stated that parents weren't going to be allowed to stay on site because of limited space and I thought for sure Dakota would decline for that reason alone. Initially she said heck no (as I suspected) but as we talked about it and I assured her I'd remain close by, she agreed to go. I thought that the place was right in downtown Ellicott City but realized I was wrong when we got there. Downtown was very close by though so after dropping her off to paint with her friends, Tony, Harper and I drove to the old part of Ellicott City to walk around. 

We hadn't been to that part of town since before the first major flood they had back in 2015 so we weren't sure what it was going to look like. The area recently suffered another damaging flood and we were shocked by how high the water had risen. I couldn't really get a good picture that expressed how high the water had been but it was well above our heads and quite sobering when we realized it.

There are still several buildings under repair in the area but there were quite a few that weren't damaged and open for business. Our first stop was in Sweet Cascades Chocolatier because the goodies they had in their window were just too good to walk past. 

We had a bit of a challenge when it came to ordering and ended up with more than we could even finish in one sitting. Harper chose a few different types of truffles and a S'moreo, Tony picked the Buckeyes and I HAD to give the chocolate covered Twinkies a try. They were divine. All of them.

A S'moreo is a S'more with an Oreo cookie center. I'm not even an Oreo fan and thought it was amazing! We saved half of that and two truffles for Dakota because we're nice like that...and we couldn't eat even one more bite.

Once we finished our treats we walked down the streets popping in the open shops to check out their stuff and eventually made our way down to the water. 

We took our time walking back to the car and then made our way back over to the pottery store to get Dakota. We got there just as the party was ending and Dakota had had a really fun time painting and hanging out with her friends. It was a pretty big deal that she stayed there without me and I was very proud of her for doing so!