Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

The next stop on our tour was a place we'd heard of but had not taken the time to visit since it was a bit out of the way; it was a perfect stop for our leisurely tour.  We'd been told that it was very pretty but didn't know much else about it.  The first thing I noticed as we approached the anchorage was a group of small sailboats that appeared to be doing figure-eight drills around bright red cones. I was concerned that they might make anchoring a challenge, but thankfully their turnaround point kept them out of our path. We learned later that St. Mary's College of Maryland sailing team dock was within a few hundred yards of our anchorage. After anchoring, Steve and I started looking at Google Maps to see if there were any restaurants close by. There weren't. In fact, St. Mary's "City" is not a modern city but rather was a "city" back in the mid-1600's! This stop turned out to be a historical gem and one of my favorite places on our tou...

After completing our land-based excursions to Maryland, New York, Florida, and Connecticut, Steve and I were ready to free Starry Night from her Galesville mooring and start our tour of the Chesapeake.  As always, we were at the mercy of the wind and so we started our journey by crossing from the western shore of Maryland, where Galesville is located, to the Eastern Shore at Rock Hall. We hoisted the mainsail with high hopes of sailing, but the winds were too light and we ended up motoring our way across. The trip was uneventful although Steve noticed white smoke or steam coming from our diesel engines' exhaust. We surmised that it was due to atmospheric conditions since air temperatures were beginning to drop but we ran the motors at lower speeds (where the steam stopped) until we could take a closer look. Rock Hall was established in 1707 and was formerly called Rock Hall Crossroads. In the Colonial Era, it was a shipping point for tobacco, seafood and other agricultural goods an...

Another month has passed quickly, and here we are at the end of August. We've spent most of our time since my last post on land. Our United States Capitol We started our land-based activities with a day trip to Washington, D.C., specifically to visit some of the Smithsonian museums.  We took the train to D.C.  from the town of Laurel, MD which allowed us to avoid city traffic and dropped us off right at the entrance of the National Museum of Asian Art, one of the places I wanted to visit. One of the things I learned while preparing for our trip was that the Smithsonian is named for the illegitimate son of an English Duke who bequeathed his estate - should his nephew die without heirs - to the United States for the establishment of an institution for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge".  The Smithsonian Castle is shown in the background of the selfie below. It houses a visitor welcome center as well as James Smithsonian's crypt and information about his life. Un...