Chesapeake Chase Day 36: St. Michaels

July 17, 2022

Today’s destination: St. Michaels.  It is a town with rich maritime history and is home to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  By 8:30 AM, we were within minutes of pulling out of our slip, and by 1:30 PM we were in our slip in St. Michaels.  This would give us plenty of time to explore since we were staying only one night.

Sundays on the water can be very busy.  On the west side of the Chesapeake, we had seen mostly sailboats (more leisurely boating).  We were now seeing mostly motor vessels.  As we went through Kent Narrows where there was a bridge opening we had to wait for and a steady stream of smaller motorboats going north and south.  So many folks were out on the water enjoying a beautiful day. 

This is an aside I have been meaning to mention since early in the trip.  All along the way we have passed many of the channel markers with osprey nests.  I would say nests were on more markers than not.  It’s the perfect place for a fishing bird to set up house.  The source of food is right there.  I finally took a picture.

Anything we wanted to do or see in St. Michaels was within walking distance, and the description of St. Michaels as “picturesque” was not an exaggeration.  We wanted to visit the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, so we headed in that direction. 

Along the way, we read that during the War of 1812 lanterns were supposedly used to misdirect the enemy gunfire high above the town.  Whether true or not, the village was able to fend off two enemy assaults in 1813.

One of the exhibits (still under construction) was a reproduction of the Maryland Dove which was a cargo vessel that accompanied the first European Settlers to Maryland; the settlers traveled on the ship Ark and landed in what is now St. Mary’s in 1634.  The Dove was lost at sea on the return trip, so this reproduction is all new construction. 

The other interest for me was the Hooper Strait Lighthouse built in 1879.  It was similar to the Drum Point Lighthouse we saw on Solomons Island.  Enjoy the pictures.  There is too much history for me to cover or even remember.

The museum includes a working shipyard to preserve and maintain the museum’s historic boat collection, and to pass down traditional wood shipbuilding skills.

Swim, Showers, Dinner. And Ice Cream

After walking through the museum, we walked to the center of town.  There were a variety of shops, including the Village Shoppe–a tiny/amazing grocery/etc. store where we bought a can of beans we needed for a crockpot recipe–and, most importantly, Justine’s Ice Cream Parlor, which we were informed was the best in town.  They stayed open until 8:00 PM so we headed back to the marina for a refreshing dip in the pool, showers on the boat, and dinner at one of the on-site restaurants – Foxy Harbor Grille. 

We then walked back to Justine’s for a “taste” of their ice cream.  We have been ranking our ice cream stops along the way.  Justine’s was good, but so far, Cow Café in Newbern, NC and the Celtic Creamery in Carolina Beach remain the top two.

This was a worthwhile stop and one night satisfied us.  We just enjoyed!

Captain’s Comments:

St. Michaels is on the Miles River, off the Eastern Bay, southeast of Kent Island. We could have gone around the west side of Kent Island, back under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, then enter Eastern Bay from the southwest, which would have been long and entailed a fair amount of backtracking. Instead, we chose to go down the east side of Kent Island and through Kent Narrows; shorter, but with a potentially shallow channel and a lift bridge to navigate.

I’ve whined a little in previous posts about fighting the tides. Heading south on the Chesapeake, with our usual travel schedule, we now have the tides in our favor. But that also meant a very strong current pushing us as we first waited for and then traversed the Kent Narrows Bridge, as all the water at high tide in the northern portion of the Chesapeake Bay tried to make its way past Kent Island in anticipation of low tide a few hours later. As a reminder, the west side of Kent Island is the eastern terminus of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Kent Narrows is on the east side of Kent Island.

The bridge tender had a schedule to follow and we had about a 15-minute wait as a result, idling north of the bridge, against the current pushing us south. The bridge opening is quite narrow (it is called Kent Narrows for a reason), and the bridge tender did a great job of coordinating communications between boats heading both north and south to ensure that the southbound boats went first with the current, then the northbound boats against the current.

All passed through safely.

We arrived shortly after lunch in St. Michaels, as planned, to give us time to explore.

I mentioned earlier that St. Michaels Marina is expensive (especially on Saturday nights–which was partly why we waited to come on Sunday). It has good, fixed docks and a competent staff, but is small. The adequate showers were a hike, tucked under an adjacent restaurant. The pool was small, stuffed in between another restaurant, the docks and the marina office. But they gifted us a picture of Betty Lou tied up at their dock taken from a drone while we were off exploring.