[Saint Michaels, MD]

When I mentioned before that the weather turned, I did not realize myself what that meant. On our drive up to Maryland’s Eastern Shore on Friday afternoon, we were listening to winter warnings and watches all along the I-95 corridor for that evening and all day Saturday. It is extremely rare to get this kind of weather here in October – this is more common in January and February. I guess mother nature wanted to make sure we got the most out of our Library of Congress umbrella.

We drove up I-95, then veered East and took the Bay Bridge over the Chesapeake Bay to get to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Fall colors on the way to Maryland

Chesapeake Bay

Bay Bridge

Shortly after we stopped for dinner at Fisherman’s Inn on Kent Island. Kent island is the largest island in the Chesapeake bay and the first English establishment (in 1631) in what is Maryland today, making it the third oldest in the US after Jamestown, Virginia and Plymouth, Massachusetts. At Fisherman’s Inn, we had yummy butternut squash cream of crab soup and, various types of seafood.

Afterwards, we continued East towards our final destination, Saint Michaels. As we entered the town, a sign read “Welcome to Saint Michaels – the town that fooled the British.” During the War of 1812, the residents of Saint Michaels were forewarned that British barges were on the water ready to attack with cannon fire. The residents took their lanterns and tied them to the trees above the city. The British naturally thought that the city was where the lights were and so they overshot Saint Michaels, missing the town entirely except for one house, which is now known as the Cannonball House.

On Saturday morning, we woke up to rain, wind, and temperatures hovering just above 40! Not exactly the best weather for sightseeing, but we decided to make the best out of it anyway. We met up with Ramon’s colleagues, Dr. Richardson and Marina, and Marina’s boyfriend Steve. Dr. Richardson has a house on the Eastern Shore just south of Saint Michaels in a town called Cambridge, so he was our tour guide for the day. He first took us to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime museum where we visited exhibits on building boats, harvesting seafood and hunting.

We also visited the lighthouse on the premises. The rain was pretty much coming down sideways at this point and we hid out in the gift shop for a while. It was clear that the rest of our sightseeing was to be done from the car.

The lighthouse

View of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum from the lighthouse. And the rain. 🙂

We drove east of Saint Michaels towards Tilghman Island where we drove by the marina and Dr. Richardson showed us the boat we would have taken out on the Bay if the weather had been better. We then drove down to the town of Cambridge and visited Dr. Richardson’s house, which he is still in the process of renovating. All this driving took a while, as the Eastern Shore of Maryland is mostly rural, and the little towns along the coast are sprinkled every 20 miles or so. It was already dinner time, and we drove for yet another 20 or 30 miles over yet another bridge to yet another island, where we had dinner at a seafood place called Old Salty’s. It was definitely worth the drive – I had the best Maryland crabcake ever, and Ramon really enjoyed his flounder filets stuffed with crab. By the time we got home it was almost 10 pm (we had left our Bed & Breakfast at 11 am) and we were ready to call it a night, hoping that the next day will bring some sunshine.