July 12, 2008.

We woke to a glorious day here in Saint Michaels. The dog walking here is accomplished on spectacular fields of lush green grass. The dogs were actually skipping along at the end of their leashes. I swear.

After returning the dogs to the boat, Christy and I went in to explore town. First off, there’s a centrally located dinghy dock right in the heart of everything (<~I know that’s redundant, but I don’t care). We started the day with a short trek to the Saturday morning Farmers Market where there were about a half dozen stands of local produce. The only downside of buying fresh produce grown locally is that we’ll probably miss out on that whole Mexican vegetable salmonella craze. First the Macarena and now this, sometimes we’re just so out of the loop.

After procuring some veggies we were off to see the town, and what a town it is. Its got all the same touristy crap that so many other waterfront towns have except this place just seems a little different. It has somehow managed to maintain some of that small town wholesomeness. The main drag is lined with one charming store front after another. The street was packed with nothing but tourists but it just didn’t seem touristy, if that makes any sense. This home was built in 1766 and was moved to its present site in 2000 and there’s not a crack to be seen. After spending the morning walking town we headed back to the boat for lunch.

After lunch we decided to hit the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. The place reminds me very much of Mystic, Connecticut.
The first thing you encounter when coming in the front entrance is a lift bridge that has been moved to the museum, after it was replaced by a high rise bridge. Instead of shitcanning the old bridge they reinstalled it across the entrance to the parks grounds. It gives car bound visitors the experience of passing under a lift bridge, like a boat, rather than driving across it as a car would. It’s kind of bizarre to see.

We came in through the back door so to speak, from the water. We went from building to building seeing exhibits concerning everything to do with the bay. There were of course boatbuilding displays and several examples of skipjacks, bugeyes and log canoes. The log canoes were very reminiscent of the Bahamanian sailing dinghies with the hiking boards hung way out over the gunnels.

There was an entire building dedicated to waterfowl hunting. There was an impressive collection of firearms confiscated by the state game wardens in the last hundred and some years. These guns were huge and could be heard for miles. They were mounted in a small boat pointing out over the waters surface. The “hunter” would use small paddles that looked like ping pong paddles and sneak up to the edge of a sleeping flock of ducks or geese. He aimed the gun by pointing the bow of the boat at his targets. Some guns had several barrels that all fired in unison while others had a single barrel that was big enough that you could fit your hand into. Some of these guns were twelve feet long and had to be lifted into the boat by 2 men. These huge guns were loaded with birdshot and when fired they could maim a hundred sleeping birds in a single fierce explosion.
These monstrous guns were outlawed in the 1800’s and confiscated whenever one was found. James Michener describes this type of gun in his book The Chesapeake and seeing some examples in person really drove home the destructive capabilities of these huge weapons.

We also learned a lot about what’s going on in all those Waterman’s boats we see out fishing the bay. The whole oyster and crab fisheries are explained really well with a lot of interesting displays. This picture is of a “keeper” oyster from the present time and of a “keeper” from the 1700’s. They were so plentiful that the oystermen back in the day didn’t have to take all the oysters, just the big ones. That shell was twice the size of my hand. I can’t swallow an oyster in this day and age, an oyster back in those days would have been like trying to swallow a puppy fetus. Yeah, visualize that the next time you’re having oysters. (Editor's note~> Sorry)

They have one of the old “screwpile” lighthouses on display. They’re called screwpile lighthouses because several large augers were screwed into the bottom and acted as the foundation for this style construction. We’ve been in a few but this was by far the best example we’ve seen. Theres more room than you would expect, but would have been a very bleak existence for the light keeper. We did learn something that we didn’t know about this type of lighthouse.
The keeper had to get up in the morning and draw the blinds around the Fresnel lens. The reason was to prevent the sun from beating in on the lens as the lens would refract the sunlight and magnify it possibly setting fire to the lighthouse. Who knew, not me.

After the museum we went to the Crab Claw Restaurant for dinner. The place was packed, by dumb luck we got the best table in the place, the food was top notch and I went home fat and happy.

Tomorrow’s trip will be an hour or so to Wye Island to hide from the blow that’s been forecast.