Yorktown to St. Michaels Via Chesapeake Bay

On May 9, Anne and Keith Palmer joined us in Norfolk and the next morning, I drove their car to Yorktown, VA where they and Pete met me with the boat. Keith was Pete's high school science professor at Loomis and they have stayed in touch ever since, so it was a great treat for us to explore some of Chesapeake Bay  with them.

The Palmers hanging out with George Washington

Since we had their car, we decided to visit Yorktown Battlefield and Museum. While we were on our audio-auto tour of the actual battle field, torrential ran began, so we contented ourselves with blurry vistas from closed car windows. Still, we learned a lot about that battle which ended the Revolutionary War when Washington and Rochambeau defeated Cornwallis.

Tangier Island crab shacks

Our next stop was Tangier Island, a place where time has, in part, stood still. The islanders drive only golf carts and speak an almost incomprehensible dialect left over from the original colonist settlers from south west England.

Tangiers' two restaurants

Keith, who is English, was the only one of the four of us who could figure out at least the gist what those folks were saying.





After Tangiers, which is on the east side of the bay, we crossed over to Solomons Island which is much bigger and far more sophisticated than Tangiers, on the west side. While there, we walked over to the Calvert Maritime Museum.

Calvert Museum's light house

The Calvert Museum has a restored example of the old style of Chesapeake Bay light houses, a "screw-pile, cottage-style" light house. The name is descriptive - they are cottage-like structures sitting on legs that were screwed into the sand/mud. There are still a few of them functioning on the bay, but are now automated.

 Ahab almost in the mammoth shark's mouth

In addition to maritime and fishing industry artifacts, the museum has a large collection of fossils from the ancient, lime stone Calvert Cliffs. One of the most unusual exhibits is of a partial skeleton of a mammoth shark.

Relaxing on the upper deck in Kinsale

Having had enough museums and tourists, we headed next, to Kinsale, VA a small town on a river off the mouth of Potomac.

Placid water in Kinsale

It looked just like a large lake from our boat in Kinsale - beautiful and quiet. We spent the whole afternoon reading and looking through our binoculars at the Osprey family nearby.

Full moon in Kinsale

All good things eventually have to end, so the next day, we backtracked down the bay to Delataville where HUMBUG was scheduled for a short hull to inspect the bottom and install new zincs. While Pete took care of that, I drove the Palmers, in an Enterprise rental, back to their car in Yorktown. From there, they went on to a B & B in Chincoteaque and I, to the Deltaville Market for groceries.

Lovely Oxford, MD

Because Pete, in preparation for cruising the bay, had read "Chesapeake," we had to stop in Oxford to eat at The Robert Morris Inn, where Mitchner reportedly outlined the novel. Oxford is on the quiet, east side of the bay and was our favorite port of call on the Chesapeake.

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

After Oxford, we stopped in St Michaels, home of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and Acme (I kept looking for the Road Runner), Market.

Oystering exhibit

The Chesapeake
Bay Maritime Museum is very much like Mystic Seaport in our home town - lots of restored buildings and beautiful old boats.

Waiting for crab cakes in St Michaels

One of the things we found interesting at the museum were the "pusher boats". They have no steering mechanism on them, just an engine.

Pusher boat engine

Pusher boats were used to push larger boats and were steered by cables, from the larger boat they pushed.

Pusher boat pushing an old Skipjack

Ever onward, as my friend Loretta says, to Annapolis and Baltimore next!