Saturday, July 27, 2013

Solomons Islands and Annapolis July 18-23, 2013

When traveling up the Chesapeake you want to travel about 50 miles a day then stop for the night. Our travel up the Chesapeake looks like a game of hopscotch as we move north. After leaving Corinthian at Point Lookout in St. Mary’s on the Potomac River we headed to Solomons Island on the Patuxent River, about a 60 mile trip north from the Potomac.

bait balls
For the last few days we keep running into this interesting phenomenom called "bait balls". You see the swirls on the surface that represents bunches of little bait fish swirling madly trying to avoid some really big fish coming after them from below.


An oysterman in the Chesapeake


Jim's Joy turning west into the Patexent River
you are never far from naval planes

Ji
The cliffs at Drum Point where they find fossils


Entering Solomons Island

entering Solomons Island
Another naval plane waiting to take off

Cheapest gas in a long time!!
Interesting fishing or something going on here


Kermit at the pool
It is called Solomons Island because it used to be an island but the old oyster house shucked so many oysters that the remains, thrown out the window, filled in the water ultimately connecting the island with the land. But everyone we talked to called it Solomons Island.

It is really hot!!
There is not much in Solomon’s Island, especially not much when the weather is 100 degrees. It is hot. All we wanted was the swimming pool. 

winding the clock in the
lighthouse
We pulled in and gassed up before heading to Zahniser’s Yacht Center. This is a nice marina. Our fellow travelers were at far points in this large marina. We tied up and headed immediately to the pool to move that body temp down to more normal levels. The pool water was already at 89 degrees. The lady working at the pool said at 94 degrees they have to close the pool according to sanitary safety standards. Can you imagine what it would be like at 100 degreees if you could see the pool but not go in? By the way, the water was so hot in the hoses that we didn’t need the hot water heater on to take a shower. The water from the faucet was so hot we had no cold water. It was hot.

Despite the heat, after we cooled off a little we headed down the road to visit the Maritime Museum. This was supposed to be a good one and it was. We walked very slowly. 


 They had a neat exhibit of restored Bay boats used in commerce and transportation.


Fresnel light in the lighthouse
The Drum Point Lighthouse had a screw pile lighthouse with a fresnet lense that previously operated at Drum Point at the mouth of the river and the bay. To give the museum docents a little break in the heat, they only had tours during half hour intervals a few times a day. We were lucky to get there in time to climb up to the lighthouse keeper’s quarters. It was hot. 

the potty
The steps were narrow and there were a bunch of kids. In fact, this one kid was wearing a spider man costume complete with the mask. He didn’t look too hot but everyone who saw him started to sweat even more.

This kind of lighthouse is called screw pile because  the legs were screwed into the bottom of the Bay. The lighthouse keeper fastened his boat to the bottom of the lighthouse and climbed stairs to the quarters. It was pretty nice with a nice breeze so it would have been comfortable most of the year. The bathroom was pretty neat – a little outhouse stuck to the outside. The hole opened to the water so it never needed cleaning! Talk about pump out!

Sharkasaurus
Kermit and Mike "downtown" Solomons
This area is famous for fossils pulled out of the river cliffs. I particularly wanted to see the massive sharkasaurus – gosh it was cool!

Kermit enjoyed the neat exhibit about power boat racing on the river through the years. It reminded me of the boat racing on the Great Lakes in the olden days.

After the museum we walked a few blocks passed the marina to the few shops where we wandered with Mike and Judy from One September. A little ice cream and the local farmers market complete with Amish people who live in the St. Mary’’s community and it was time to get back to the air conditioning.
Night falls at Zahniser's in Solomons

We had dinner at the fine restaurant at Zanheiser’s with Rick and Betsy from Rick N Roll. They are quite experienced loopers so we enjoyed hearing their stories.

Good Karma leaving Solomons
The next day we ran another 60 miles to Annapolis, a big highlight on the Chesapeake. The water was just about perfect. 
We’ve been to Annapolis before about 15 years ago with friends from All Ports Yacht Club. It was such a blast to visit during the annual October Boat Show.

Nuclear power plant in background
Naval ships for midshipman practice
Coming in to Annapolis 
Naval Academy ball field from the
water
Naval jet doing a flyby

Following JimsJoy up Ego Alley to the Yacht Basin
We stayed at Annapolis Yacht Basin immediately next to the Annapolis Yacht Club – literally next to the building. We tried to get in but they were not interested in us at all since our club has no reciprocal privileges and no dining room. We couldn’t even get in with Blue Gavel. We didn’t need it anyway.

You enter the Yacht Basic past the Naval Academy through what is called Ego Alley, a very narrow passage in which very large boats parade to show off their big boats to their friends and neighbors. 

Our boat is not large but even we found the passage to be intimidating. The basin is filled with really big boats. I mean really big boats. Yachts even. We heard that the Yacht Basin is having a little dispute with the Annapolis Yacht Club so they purposely dock the biggest boats right next to the club house to block the view. Nice.
Docking even our little boat is quite a challenge. You go around some corners without being able to see what is coming at you because moving boats might not be seen around the really big boats. We had to stern in to this tiny slip with a teeny finger dock tucked in a corner. Kermit was up to the challenge. He made it look easy. But it was not easy at all.

We continue to travel with One September and Jim’s Joy. One September docked at Jay and Donna Tull’s dock nearby. We met Jay and Donna in Naples over the winter so it was nice to reconnect. He is a pediatric dentist that Mike knew from his dentist days. Donna was with us when Judy and I bought new bathing suits in Naples.

Mike and Judy rented a car to attend a bridal shower for their son and future daughter-in-law in Easton. Along the way they stopped for a tasting at the place they targeted for the rehearsal dinner. It sounds delicious!!

L: Kermit, Katherine, Marianne, and Allen at
Chick N Ruth's for breakfast
On Friday night, we walked over the bridget to join Mike and Judy for dinner at this great restaurant called Carroll's Creek Café with Jim, Joy, Donna and Jay. We had cocktails and appetizers during happy hour. I had the best scallop appetizer with two big scallops wrapped in shreds of phyllo. Mmmmm….. Judy and Mike moved on to Baltimore with Cavalier Yacht Club while JimsJoy and Good Karma stayed in Annapolis for a few more days.

This restaurant is a kick
On Saturday we had breakfast with Allen and Marianne Bernard from Treasure Cay. We laughed and talked and got caught up on life since the Bahamas. They suggested this crazy deli on Main Street, Chick N Ruth’s. Breakfast was greasy and wonderful. I finally got potatoes cooked or rather burned the way I like them!! It was wonderful! It was so good that we took Jim and Joy there on Monday!


Marissa joined us after lunch, driving up from DC. Gosh it is so good to see her and hold her in my arms. She stayed overnight.

We did the whole touristy thing. The State House was quiet on Saturday morning. Kermit couldn’t come in because he had his Leatherman so couldn’t pass through the metal detector. He chatted with the security guard while I wandered around. 



Couldn't go in here either
This state house functioned as the Maryland capital since it was a colony. George Washington resigned his commission after the Revolution in this building. 

The Rotunda was closed
Unfortunately that room was closed for restoration. In fact half the building including the oldest parts is closed for restoration (in restoro as they say in Italy) while they replace glass in the famous rotunda. But the house and senate chambers are open and very impressive.
Japanese tourists in the state house
Critter alert!

We visited two Georgian mansions from the 1790s, the Paca House and Hammond-Harwood House, both fascinating architectural specimens. Both houses were built around the same time.
William Paca, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and three time Maryland governor, designed his home himself on 2 acres of land, built in 1765. This style of architecture is known for its symmetry inside and out but Mr. Paca made a few mistakes. For example he forgot to add a back stair so he added it on at the end, making the house a bit off balance.

We learned that these houses are built in five parts - a main house and two smaller outbuildings connected by passageway buildings called “hyphens”. Isn’t that clever? The kitchen is usually one of the outbuildings.
Entrance to Hammond-Harwood House
e Hammond Harwood house was designed by a famous architect trained in Paris, William Buckland. Jefferson called this the most beautiful entrance and copied it for Monticello.

Marissa and Kermit in front of that special
door made to look like a window
Buckland did not make mistakes with symmetry. The house has 3 fake doors to carry off the symmetry. Each door and window has a matching door or window on the opposite side.

Taking it to the extreme, they needed a window in the big back parlor leading to the outside so guests could use the lavatory in the garden but the symmetry required a window so he build a special door that looked exactly like a window!!

Gardens at Paca house
Both houses have amazing gardens. The Paca house was converted into a hotel and the gardens covered with cement. In the 1970s the historical society got involved and purchased the home when the hotel went out of business. They convinced the state to purchase what had been the gardens then rebuilt the gardens exactly how it had been in the past. The guide says they even found the original garden foundations. They rebuilt and remodeled using the archeological excavations and Peale’s portrait of William Paca showing the gardens in the background.


Neither house allows any photos inside the building. We are confident this is because the houses are jam packed with furnishings either original to the house or original to the period. The contents are worth a literal fortune.

I particularly liked the moldings in the Harwood house. Each room had different kinds of moldings made off site and installed in place. Really intricate stuff with dentils and curlicues. And the rooms were painted in bright colors appropriate to the period – blues, greens, and  yellows.

The Harwood house was stuffed with paintings by two generations of Peale’s, the same fellow who painted George Washington. It had this really famous Peale painting of a little girl holding her doll and they also had the actual doll painted in the picture sitting on a chair next to the picture.  We found that a little creepy. The docent said she had 3 people in the last week who came on the tour just to see that particular painting and the doll that goes with it. Go figure.

We visited a little house with a docent describing what it was like to live in this area when Indians lived here, called Hogshead.
He showed us the many uses for cow horns including making combs and cups. We visited the Freedom Bound exhibit about runaways slaves and slave resistance. Alex Haley and his family are from Annapolis area so they have statues commemorating his famous book, Roots, at the dock where the slave auctions were held.

By the way, just because I didn’t mention it, don’t assume the weather got better. It was so hot on Thursday when we arrived that we didn’t even leave the boat. We tried to walk in the morning and rest in air conditioning in the afternoon.



Rusty wanted no part of walking around. He is still favoring his back legs although he can walk better than when we had that major problem at York River Yacht Haven. But he was satisfied with two walks a day, one in the morning and one in the evening before and after the heat. His legs are getting stronger but he is still a bit wobbly. The heat doesn't help. 

The gang from left: Darrell, Lisa, Allen, Marianne, Jim, Joy,
Katherine, Kermit, Laura, and Ross
One of the wonderful parts of looping is meeting up with great people. We arranged dinner with Why Knot and The Zone on Sunday night at Carroll's Creek Cafe again. Allen and Marianne joined us again making it a big group of fellow travelers. They fit right in.

Why Knot and The Zone are making an extended stay at Annapolis Landing a few miles away. We laughed and told stories on each other and generally had a great time. We also celebrated Jim and Joy’s 41st anniversary with a cake supplied by the Carroll's Creek Café. We liked the restaurant so much we visited again this time for dinner. More crab cakes for me! I am almost crab caked out. Hard to believe.

Isn't that sweet?

Marissa and I took a drive to re-provision the boat and generally kill time with each other shopping. There is nothing better than time with my daughter. Then Sunday afternoon she went back to DC.  I will try to drive out in the fall after we return home to see her again.

Monday Jim, Joy, Kermit and I walked over to tour the Naval Academy.

We took the 10:30am tour with a wonderful guide whose son and husband both attended the Academy. She said her son described the first year, or plebe year, as a mixture of monastery and prison.



The only students on campus were first year plebes, their instructors, and the upper classmen on site to whip the plebes into shape.

We lucked out and saw students in the gym learning how to swim and how to wrestle (females too).

The place is littered with statues and monuments. 

Upper class leaders watching a
group of plebes do something 
We also lucked out and saw the rehearsal and actual change of guard. The plebe summer is divided into two parts. The first 3 weeks is really intense indoctrination and physical training, sort of like boot camp.  All privileges including any communication with the outside world is taken away. We heard a lot of yelling. I can’t imagine what the upper classmen do to these poor kids.

Practice
The second three weeks is more about learning about school and how to function among the other students. This requires a new set of upper classmen. So they have a formal change of guard in the plaza outside the living quarters where all 4000+ students live in one building divided into brigades and units filled with all years of midshipmen.

When our tour arrived at this building, we saw the upper class unit leaders practicing marching in and yelling their responses over and over until they got it right. And they did! It was great.

When the plebes came to the plaza to get into formation, they were doing this funny duck walk to get to their appointed spot.


Other midshipmen watching


We asked some of the upper class students standing near us watching the show and they said the plebes get yelled at if they ever run in uniform and they get yelled at if they are too slow so they adopt this duck walk to get to their spot fast. But they get yelled at regardless so it is futile. It just looks really funny.

Every tour goes to the Chapel to visit the John Paul Jones tomb, kind of garish black marble with gold stripes.

Outside the Chapel is an obolisk that plebes climb every spring to pick up the new cover to replace the plebe hat. The entire class has to participate. The obolisk is covered in grease! Every graduate remembers the time it took to make the climb ranging from 90 seconds one year (no grease) to over 4 hours (lots of grease). Everything here is competitive.
We walked through the armory on the day the plebes would get their school supplies. Each kid gets a trolley filled with computers, clothes, tools, and communication devices. All that stuff was being set up in the armory. Midshipmen are supplied with everything they need from linens to clothes to computers as part of the privilege of going to school there. The guide kept saying it is all part of ensuring the students can focus on becoming the best leader they can be.

2013 is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. This was a particularly big deal in the Bay because the British were all up and in their faces in the Bay. Remember the British burned Washington DC which is a short couple day ride up the Potomac River off the Bay.

 
The Naval Academy has a neat exhibit “Seas, Lakes & Bay: The Naval War of 1812” describing all the ships involved from every nation, all the captains, and all the big battles. They have ship models, swords, flags, and clothing worn by folks involved. One exhibit described the battle of Lake Erie at Put-in-Bay!

We stayed longer than we planned in Annapolis because there is so much to see. But we are ready to move. Next stop is St. Michaels, MD to meet up with the Cavalier Yacht Club and One September. It was another beautiful day for a ride. Again this was about 50 or 60 miles, east out of Annapolis into the Bay then south southeast to St. Michaels on the eastern shore.


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