St Michaels and Cambridge

-15 miles as the crow flies, but 45 nautical miles to get to St. Michaels from Cambridge as the route is so curvy.

St. Michaels is small, upscale, very beautiful, well preserved 1600's town.  Lots of shops, restaurants and a great maritime museum.  We really enjoyed it and spent 2 nights here.

We paid $1.50/ foot ($60.) for the slip fee.  Next weekend it goes to prime season and the rate goes up to $3.50/ foot .  You probably couldn't even get into the marina as this place is really popular and will be jammed.  It is only about 1 1/2  hours away from DC or Baltimore for a fast boat.  Even though we complain about things being closed there are advantages to being off season.

St. Michaels church , 1672.  The church bell rings every 15 minutes and is heard all over town.

The Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Maritime Museum

St MIchaels lighthouse

Lots of Oysters!!  Oyster everything! - Chesapeake Bay used to be the greatest oyster producing place on earth.  People came from everywhere to make their living this way (kind of like the gold rush in Ca).  They  had oyster wars and this is for real,  oyster police.  

We have heard of 2 boats that had oyster "buds" that got into their engine strainers around here and caused major engine problems.   Bill has been checking....

The large oyster is the average size oyster found in Chesapeake Bay in 1700.  The small oyster is the average size here now.  At that time the entire Chesapeake Bay water was filtered by the oysters every 3 - 6 days. The oyster population was decimated by oyster fishing over the last couple hundred years and has never come back.

We visited the Chesapeake Bay Maritime and Boat Building Museum in St. Michael and it was really amazing. 

St. Michaels - oyster boats

St. Michaels lighthouse

St. Michaels

                                       Harriet Tubman Museem  (the Moses of the Underground Railroad)
                                   Cambridge, MA.  She lived here and her  underground station was in this town.

Cambridge is for the most part a distressed town that has seen better days.  Riding my bike I was surprised to find there was a very nice area there with  old beautiful  homes.  We were ready to go after one night.

It was a long way, 15 miles up the river to get to Cambridge .

Trivia:  It was prom night at the waterfront restaurant we were at.  The girls here were wearing long, formal dresses. On the west coast it is short dresses!