Monday, October 26, 2020

A Walk Around UMBC Campus

We went for a walk around the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, campus. The campus is pretty far from downtown. It's spread out over some rolling hills just west and south of the city. 

The first thing we did was find a geocache. Our GPS led us to this map of campus. The cache turned out to be behind the kiosk/bus stop/whatever it is.

A campus map

Cold War Relic? is hidden in a spot where the cache placer used to come back in the 1950s. He says there was a military post but the only evidence left is the concrete ring. Everything else has gone back to nature.

A good spot for a cache

We walked down into the campus proper and came upon the Performing Arts and Humanities building, which had a large, interesting, and unidentified sculpture in front.
The first set of buildings

An art installation

Enjoying the sculpture

View from the building
View from the sculpture to where the two buildings meet

The benches nearby were not the best for sitting and relaxing.

Bench with a note

A bench not for sitting--must be an artistic statement

As we progressed, we found another sculpture that was also unidentified. A couple of dead trees?

Mysterious sculpture

Further along, we found a sculpture made from recyclable materials. The kids were very impressed with it. The label even says that it was made by the UMBC Kinetic Sculpture team. Still no name was given for the sculpture.

A fun sculpture

Less impressive from the front

An award-winning work

In the center of the academic buildings is The Quad, a rectangular grassy area with an outdoor pool on one end and the Commons at the other end. We were surprised to see swimmers out doing laps in the 50 degree weather. Those are committed athletes!

The pool

The Commons

By the university center (where all the fast food is), we saw some interesting picnic tables. The umbrellas are fancy. Not fancy looking, but a fancy design. Solar panels provide power to the diners (at least, if they brought plugs for their electronics).

What the table?

Power to the students!

A view with the solar panels

Nearby, a sculpture of the school's mascot stands guard. They chose someone local--a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Usually my youngest son is very cautious around dogs but he was perfectly happy to pet this guy.

A gentle dog

The other view

A bunch of the buildings are named after donors to the school. The Sondheim Building even has a sculpture of Walter Sondheim!

Hanging out by his building

I think this trash can is named after this squirrel

The library pond didn't have any fish in it. It was very clean and very relaxing.

The Pond

A view to the library

The library looks very fancy. We didn't get to go inside since we are not students. Maybe someday.

Library entrance

On our way back to the car, we some some other houses. The greenhouse was not very big considering the size of the campus. Maybe they don't have a big agricultural program.

Greenhouse

The student housing across the street looked fairly normal and uninteresting.

Student housing

Near the greenhouse is the campus's plant. Haha!

Library eclipsed by facilities

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