Day Weekend

The weather is warm without being scorching. The breezes are benign. And the weekend has an extra 24 hours. These are ideal conditions for an outbreak of "landscape fever," an affliction that sweeps across the region during Memorial Day weekend. Clad in garden gloves, wearing hats, their skin slicked with sunscreen, the afflicted will be outdoors rearranging the terrain, planting, trimming, laying down decorative stones. Bill and Sandy Fritz, for example, will be pulling up old stones and putting down a new flagstone path at their southern Pennsylvania home.

For Marylanders heading for the beaches, the mountains, the front stoop or the backyard barbecue on this Memorial Day weekend, warm, sunny skies and cool, pleasant nights mean the summer season has arrived and winter is but a distant memory.The weekend marks the beginning of the weekly pilgrimage to Ocean City, with the requisite frolicking on the boardwalk and the ritual traffic backup at the Bay Bridge, and this year is no different. By 4: 15 p.m. yesterday, there was a traffic jam five miles long as weekend vacationers waited to pay their toll.

Ah, Memorial Day Weekend!The state troopers are propping up fake two-dimensional squad cars to slow down those speeding to relax.A hotel in Ocean City is trucking up 100 Florida palm trees and planting them with a crane so they can be reflected in sunglasses before they die next winter.And an American Legion commander in Towson is still waiting to hear back from a Cub Scout leader to see whether Generation Next is willing to plant flags on the graves of America's war dead.The three-day weekend that marks the unofficial start of summer is many things to many people: picnics with the family; wild jags to the beach to celebrate graduation; quiet time at home for gardening or napping; remembering a dead relative at a Memorial Day parade.

It's back, and you can jump on the excitement early.The 115th Maryland State Fair officially begins on Saturday, but some pre-thrills are available tomorrow night.From 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., visitors can enjoy "WQSR Ride Mania Family Fun Night." For $7, you can ride all night. And if you're in the mood for a little entertainment, you can see nostalgia groups the New Rascals and the Turtles on the track infield for $12.And that's just the beginning.This year's fair boasts a variety of new events in addition to tradition.

When the Flying Scot sailboats begin racing this weekend from Deep Creek Lake Yacht Club, summer begins in Garrett County.When the fossil hunters of shark teeth from the Miocene Period fill up the parking lot of Calvert Cliffs State Park, it's summer on the Western Shore.When the motorboats go dead in the Atlantic and in Assawoman Bay after a winter of dry dock, the Coast Guard knows summer has come to Ocean City.Marylanders fed up with snowy winter and cool spring begin the hot season in many ways this Memorial Day weekend, no matter that summer solstice is not until June 21. They will honor the war dead, open public and private pools, tend gardens, buy cars and whatnot, watch the Orioles, start the croquet season, get married, leave town and refuse to budge.

OCEAN CITY -- Summer 1994 is ending as it began, with "Help Wanted" signs flowering along Coastal Highway and hopes for a lucrative holiday weekend.As colleges and universities go back into session, jobs are opening up here, and seasonal workers with later school dates are in demand. And, as the Labor Day long weekend arrives and summer slips away, businesses and workers are already looking ahead."Last one over the bridge turn out the lights and lock the door? That doesn't happen here," said the town's director of tourism, Bob Rothermel.

Most days, Fred Flintstone digs up rocks at the Slate & Co. quarry.But over the Memorial Day weekend, he struck gold.Confounding pundits who pegged it as more of a mega-flop thaa mega-hit, the live-action big-screen version of "The Flintstones" set off a sensational $37.2 million box-office avalanche over the four-day holiday weekend, according to industry estimates. That tops the previous Memorial Day weekend champ, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," which made $37.03 million in 1989.

Here's a Goliath and David story: the Memorial Day weekend at the beach vs. a history lesson.That is the match drawn by organizers of the Founders' Day Weekend, starting tomorrow in Ellicott City's Historic District.The event, a creation of Ed Williams, director of the B&O Railroad Station Museum, commemorates the founding of Ellicott Mills -- today's Ellicott City -- more than two centuries ago, which he pegs to 1772.The core of this weekend activity is historical recreations by the South River Sutlers of Annapolis.

OCEAN CITY -- The first "no vacancy" signs of the season blinked on in Ocean City this weekend as the Memorial Day pilgrimage to the seashore began.Sunny skies and warm temperatures made the beach yesterday's main attraction -- the first full day of the summer season. Afternoon temperatures stayed around 75 degrees and water temperature was 63 degrees.Temperatures are expected to be about the same today with a chance of afternoon showers."The weather is a nice change. Usually it rains," said Virginia Brassel of Annapolis, who was sitting under a beach umbrella near 11th Street with her husband, Jon, an attorney.

After the safest and coolest Memorial Day in recent years, Marylanders headed home yesterday to find some -- but not all -- of the traditional highway bottlenecks waiting for them.The most dangerous place yesterday was the water, with the Maryland Natural Resources Police reporting two drownings.Fidel Salmeron, 19, of Hyattsville, fell into the Potomac River and disappeared while fishing with family members near Offutt Island in Montgomery County. A search for his body was to resume today.

With gas prices running about $1.50 a gallon less than last year, AAA Mid-Atlantic is projecting a 3.9 percent increase in travel by Marylanders this Memorial Day weekend - welcome news for regional tourist destinations. In a news conference Wednesday on Kent Island, AAA government affairs director Mahlon G. "Lon" Anderson said the organization's survey predicts a robust travel weekend this year - a stark contrast with last year. "Trips by auto are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of Americans' returning wanderlust," Anderson predicted under skies just as sunny as his forecast.

Notebook With classes starting before Labor Day at most Maryland public schools, a proposal to be voted on Friday by the state's 24 local superintendents would allow games to be played as early as Labor Day weekend. The proposed amendment would change the start of fall practice from Aug. 15 to a sliding date - the sixth Saturday after the first Sunday in July. Ned Sparks, executive director of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, said 185 of the state's 188 public schools started school in August this fall.

Organizers expect attendance for this year's Maryland State Fair to be higher than the turnout last year, when rain fell during the normally busy Labor Day weekend. Labor Day weekend 2007 was different, with temperatures in the 80s and sunshine galore. That meant big crowds at the Timonium fairgrounds and lots of business for vendors. Early estimates put total fair attendance this year at about 410,000, compared with 344,000 last year. "We have had two fabulous days in a row," said Max Mosner, president and general manager of the Maryland State Fair and Agricultural Society Inc., the nonprofit that runs the annual event.

The weather is warm without being scorching. The breezes are benign. And the weekend has an extra 24 hours. These are ideal conditions for an outbreak of "landscape fever," an affliction that sweeps across the region during Memorial Day weekend. Clad in garden gloves, wearing hats, their skin slicked with sunscreen, the afflicted will be outdoors rearranging the terrain, planting, trimming, laying down decorative stones. Bill and Sandy Fritz, for example, will be pulling up old stones and putting down a new flagstone path at their southern Pennsylvania home.

If the automobile is the unofficial symbol of American independence, then what could be more appropriate than spending the Fourth of July in the car with the family? AAA projected that 40.3 million Americans - more than ever before - would travel this holiday weekend. And the majority would go by car, said AAA spokeswoman Ragina Averella. Many of those who drove all day yesterday had no qualms about spending hours confined to their vehicles. "God, it is great to be an American," said Rodney Whetstone, a New Jersey resident who was making a pit stop at the Maryland House rest stop on Interstate 95 near Aberdeen yesterday.

Dallas may seem a strange place to start a Hollywood revolution. But that's what happened there on March 26, 1975, when Steven Spielberg's Jaws, the story of a 26-foot shark feasting on inhabitants of a New England village, was shown to a preview audience. "Not until that first screening did we know we had something, that we had truly hit a nerve," remembers co-producer Richard D. Zanuck. "Not until that first scream ... " Thirty years later, with a special-edition DVD about to be released and a big birthday bash planned for next weekend in Martha's Vineyard, where the movie was filmed, Jaws' status as a cinema milestone is secure.

By moving the NCAA Division I national championships to Memorial Day weekend in 2006, officials hope to ease the burden on participating teams and rev up attendance. Kathy Zerrlaut, chair of the Division I women's lacrosse championship committee and senior associate athletic director at UMBC, said the committee has been talking about making the move for years. The women's final four has been held the weekend before Memorial Day, while the men's tournament culminates over the holiday weekend.

Baltimore will find out at the end of next week if its bid to be the host of the NCAA men's lacrosse final four in 2005 and 2006 has been successful, tournament coordinator Marty Schwartz said yesterday. Philadelphia is also competing for a two-year contract, but Baltimore is considered the front-runner because of its unequaled success (109,000 spectators for the three-day Memorial Day weekend) in conducting the 2003 final four at M&T Bank Stadium. Both cities have made presentations to the NCAA Lacrosse Committee.

It was a summer of cancellations for the Pocomoke River Cruises. Too many soggy days kept people away from the scenic boat rides. "If it's thundering and lightning, you really don't want to be on the water," said Rai Coiro, who runs the cruises with her husband in Snow Hill. "You really just can't enjoy the river." So it went this summer, from Maryland's foggy mountain resorts in the west to the rain-soaked beaches in the east. While some restaurants and tourist spots reported solid seasonal bookings, for many it was the summer that wasn't.

Rainy weather over the past few weeks has pushed many of the state high school championships past Memorial Day, but next year, some tournaments are likely to run into June by design. The public school spring tournaments will take a four-day break the week before Memorial Day to give student-athletes time to concentrate on the high school assessment tests beginning next year. Because Memorial Day is so late in 2004 -- May 31 -- some state tournament contests may continue into the first week of June, said Ned Sparks, executive director of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association.