Leg #5 -- 9/19/13 to 10/1/13 -- Hampton, VA to Baltimore, MD

We arrived in Nor­folk early and drove to Vir­ginia Beach which looks like all of the other beach towns along the Atlantic.  We had lunch and went to Whole Foods for pro­vi­sions.  Back to boat at Salt Pond Marina.   Ken took the rental car back while I veg­ged with a book.  We had din­ner at the Marina and took off early the morn­ing of the 19^th head­ing  to Cape Charles.

Old cement ships used as a breakwater.

On the way we took a look the inter­est­ing break­wa­ter at Kip­topeke State Park that is made up of ten cement boats built around 1940.  After they were built, some­one decided that they were not work­ing out, and then used the shells out­side the ferry land­ing at the park site as a breakwater.

Cape Charles turned out to be a very charm­ing town with a cou­ple of nice restau­rants and a sprin­kling of shops.  The town has many his­tor­i­cal houses that are very well main­tained and the whole town was very pleas­ant.  We hit the cof­fee shop for lunch, then later to Shanty’s for appe­tiz­ers and Kelly’s Pub for another beer and snack.  The sail­boat next to us had four men on it and they were doing a “Boys on Board” trip !
I walked all around the town in the morn­ing after mail­ing Vail’s 2^nd postcard—the last post­card in town for this sea­son ! (Vail has a project at school that has asked for post­cards from wher­ever any­one is traveling.)
We left Port Charles at 8:30am head­ing to Tang­iers Island about 45 miles north.  The weather was beau­ti­ful and the water was flat—great.  We made a quick trip of it.

A pic­ture per­fect shot of the crab shacks on Tang­iers Island.

“The Mr. Parks” of Parks Marina

On to Tang­iers Island and a stop at Parks Marina.  Mr. Parks was very inter­est­ing and help­ful.  The lit­tle town has quite a his­tory and now has a small museum and infor­ma­tion cen­ter that tells you a bit of that tale.  The local accent is fun and the peo­ple are very engag­ing.  We took the $5.00/15 minute local golf cart tour and learned where every­thing was.  We are a lit­tle off-season so din­ner was a bit early—dessert first and a take-home.  One of our crew needs to want to cook !

We left Tang­ier Island and headed up the Potomac.  We’d had a few dis­cus­sions on whether to include this river because of the time involved get­ting to the north end.  We finally agreed to go ahead and head to Alexan­dria for a few nights.  Our first stop was Colo­nial Bay Marina.  We rented a golf cart and headed off to see what else was around.  We had lunch at one of the 3 Ori­en­tal restau­rants in the area, an ice cream at a lit­tle stand and just drove around to get a feel of the area.  We had din­ner, along with music, at the restau­rant at the marina.  I did find a post­card at one of the local art shops to send…so far, so good on the “Vail Post­card” project.

Mt. Ver­non atop a hill over look­ing the Potomac River…Gorgeous !

We left early and headed north to Alexan­dria.   We were not able to dock at Mount Ver­non because there were fer­ries at both sides of the dock so we kept on going.  We thought that we were going to stay at the National Har­bor Marina on the east side of the river but were able to get into the Alexan­dria City Marina.  It turned out to be a great loca­tion for see­ing the city.  We were straight out of the Tor­pedo Fac­tory which is now filled with great artists’ stu­dios.  There are lots of local restau­rants, 

shops and won­der­ful his­toric neigh­bor­hoods to walk.

Rose and Pel from home.…we ran in to them at Mt. Vernon.

We rented a car and drove the 8 miles south to Mr. Ver­non.  It’s a beau­ti­ful spot over­look­ing the Potomac.  Again, lots of inter­est­ing his­tory.  The small world that it is, we ran into Rose and Pel from home.  We made arrange­ments for later and they came to the boat around 5:00 for a drink and then off to dinner.

We met some boat neigh­bors on a Ranger Tug and they gave us some local knowl­edge of the Potomac and Chesa­peake mari­nas.  We just hung around and toured Alexan­dria for another day.
We took off in the morn­ing at daybreak—6:40am head­ing south on the Potomac.  We were head­ing to Cobb Island but got there so early that we kept going to Pt. Look­out.  This was an absolutely quiet spot espe­cially after being under the flights going into Ronald Reagon Wash­ing­ton National Air­port for a cou­ple of days.
We left Pt. Look­out and headed to Soloman’s Island and stayed at the Spring Cove Marina.  We walked to “town” and had an excep­tion­ally good lunch at the CD Café….walked fur­ther to have a drink at the infa­mous Tiki Hut Bar.  We took a walk to West Marine later and then spent a short Happy Hour at the Water­front Restaurant—back to the boat for left­overs for dinner.…remember.…eat and drink.…..

Light­house at Cam­bridge and smoke­stack from boat that brought Roo­sevelt here to open the new bridge.

We left Solomon’s after my morn­ing walk and headed to Cam­bridge, MD on the East­ern Shore.  A charm­ing lit­tle town that is the Dorch­ester County Seat.  Quite a con­trast of extremes in hous­ing around the town.  There is enough here to make an inter­est­ing visit.  We stayed a bit longer in the morn­ing for break­fast since it’s only 11 miles across to Oxford.  The wind is blow­ing a bit stronger this morn­ing so it might be a lit­tle rough.

Well, the water was fine and the sun came out but we decided to head over to St. Michael’s and go in the back way via Broad Creek to San Domingo Creek. We anchored out for the first time in quite awhile.…it was beau­ti­ful and so quiet.  I had for­got­ten how nice it is to be at anchor.  Well, until we had a few prob­lems with the batteries/electric.  Ken slept on the couch watch­ing the bat­tery bank light.  Every­thing was fine in the morn­ing though we did have to run the gen­er­a­tor to make coffee.

St. Michael’s is a beau­ti­ful lit­tle town full of fun shops and restau­rants.  It was really busy since it was Sat­ur­day.  We heard that a lot of peo­ple come here on the week­ends from the D.C. and Bal­ti­more areas.  They are all here today.  We walked around and had ice cream first, stopped at Alva’s for pizza and drinks and a nice con­ver­sa­tion with a cou­ple from the other side–the West­ern Shore.We went back to the boat for a rest and took the dinghy back around 8:00pm for din­ner.  We made it back to the boat with a tiny, lit­tle flash­light.  Luck­ily, the stars and anchor lights led the way home.

We left the anchor­age early in the morn­ing and decided to go to Rock Hall for a night.  We went through the Knapps Nar­rows and Knapps Nar­rows 12′ Bridge on Tilgham Island.  We went north through the East­ern Bay to the Kent Nar­rows then on to Rock Hall Marina.  After tying up and check­ing in, we hailed the local trans­porta­tion and took a tour of the penin­sula.  We got off “down­town” and walked around.…ending up with a great lunch at a restaurant/soda shop.  With full bel­lies, we walked back to the marina.A din­ner at the Water­man next door while watch­ing the sun­set made another great day.In the morn­ing, we headed out to our final port.…Baltimore.  We are keep­ing the boat at Hen­der­son Marina at Fell’s Point.

We went under the Fran­cis Scott Key Bridge into Bal­ti­more Har­bor.  This is a very large port with a great deal of com­mer­cial activ­ity.  There is a red, white and blue bouy on the west side of the bridge that marks the spot where Key wrote the poem dur­ing the war of 1812 that would become the “Star Span­gled Banner”.

We are keep­ing the boat in an area of Bal­ti­more called Fells Point–a funky, his­toric area filled with 180+ bars and restau­rants.  Sev­eral peo­ple at the marina imme­di­ately through that num­ber around.  We fig­ured we were going to have a hard time pub crawl­ing to all of them.  The first day, we walked around and hit a few of the rec­om­mended places. Also, found Kil­wins in Bal­ti­more! The sec­ond day, we walked to the Pres­i­dent Street Sta­tion to catch a local trol­ley tour.  We’ve been on a lot of bet­ter lit­tle city tours but it did give us an overview since we are not get­ting a car this trip.  We also did the Water Taxi and went to the Amer­i­can Vision­ary Art Museum.  Din­ner back at Fells Point and Ken got his oys­ters.  Wednes­day was a clean­ing and orga­niz­ing day–and then we left for home.