Back into Tourist Mode

At Solomons, the relocated Drum Point Lighthouse
and a Skipjack oysterboat

So, we have our car now, and find that this area is just dripping with history, so we pack up all our Yankee Greenbacks & set off to see what there is to see.

Our first trip is north across the Patuxent River to the boating community of Solomons Island.  We had visited this town for the first time in 2007, attending a boat show before we bought “Fruition”, and we still remember the fabulous crab cakes we had.  We easily located the restaurant and had a very enjoyable dockside meal.  We also toured the maritime museum in town, learning more about the watermen of the Chesapeake & their boats.

The home of the Lee family of Virginia, along the Potomac

The Colonial "rebels" firing actual smooth bore muskets

The Redcoats had these effective weapons called
"bayonets"

We were surprised to learn that this “Northern Neck” of Virginia (the peninsula bordering the Potomac) was the birthplace of many of the country’s Founding Fathers.  James Monroe (5^th President & author of the Monroe Doctrine) was born right outside of Colonial Beach.  James Madison (4^th President) was born 15 miles south along the Rappahannock River.  George Washington (27^th President) (just seeing if you’re paying attention) was born along the Potomac just 10 miles south.  And adjacent to that is Stafford Hall – the home of the Lee family of Virginia, two of whom signed the Declaration of Independence, and one who graduated from the US Army Military Academy to become an excellent soldier and the leader of the Army of the Confederacy (Robert E Lee for all you Yankees).  Of course, we had to tour all these sites.  We lucked out at the Pope Creek birthplace of Washington, because a weekend of reenactment was being held.  We learned about those dastardly Redcoats & that ol’ George wasn’t necessarily the perfect angel that the school books portray. 

 

Dinner with Jeanie & Bill from S/V Nemo

The next couple days found us together again with our sailboater friends Bill & Jeanie from S/V “Nemo”, who we traveled with for a month & ate lots of crab with in Crisfield MD.  We picked them up at their boat in Deltaville VA to re-provision, and then to drive over to Reedville to another maritime museum. Reedville was at one time the richest town in America due to the vast quantities of menhaden fish caught & processed.  I thought this was almost laughable because these menhaden fish are very odiferous & oily – and in New Orleans we called them “pogie fish” and thought of them as a junk fish.  Anyway, we ended the day over dinner at a unique restaurant called the Inn at Kilmarnock, where we broke bread & told lots of lies – er, I mean, sea stories (some of which were actually true!)

"If God had meant us to build fibre-glass boats,
He would have grown fibre-glass trees"

 

Reedville Fisherman's Museum in front of replica of Capt
John Smith's boat used to explore the Chesapeake Bay

Italian marble crypt of John Paul Jones at USNA

Oliver's battle flag from Put-In-Bay Ohio on Lake Erie

Our “final fling” (kinda sounds like the night before one gets married!) was a 2-day rainy trip up to Annapolis to explore its long history of boats & the sea.  We first took a walking tour in the rain of that little college by the sea called the US Naval Academy & saw all the Plebes (first year Midshipmen) running around in their white Dixie cups.  That gave me the shivers & reminded me of my first year as a Midshipman in NROTC, with the upperclassmen yelling at you all the time trying to make some sense out of everything.  We saw the fabulous crypt of John Paul Jones (“I have just begun to fight”) below the Chapel on base.  We toured the USNA museum, which had a good history of the US Navy.  Two items stood out for me.  As all you relatives from Lake Erie and the War of 1812 can appreciate, the museum had the actual battle flag flown by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, with the last words of his mentor Admiral James Lawrence, “Don’t Give Up The Ship”.  Secondly, the museum had a fantastic display, the largest collection of 17^th & 18^th century ship models, which were built hundreds of years ago and used as a model to construct the actual sailing ships.  Some of these models were 5 feet long and 4 feet tall, most with a complete set of rigging and a full broadside of cannon!  Impressive.

 

Model at USNA museum made out of silver!

So now we’re finished being landlubbers, and are ready to put to sea.  We’ll head north up the Bay, with no schedule until August 25, when we’ll be in Baltimore Inner Harbor for a couple days.  We plan to anchor a lot & try to use our dinghy, which we have been patching for several days.  There’s things yet to see, and crab yet to eat!