Back Creek, Solomon's Island

Today is another down day for us -- we are expecting Kerry and Jen tomorrow morning and so, we are staying put; well, almost -- we actually started the day by moving the boat from Mill creek to Back creek so we could take a mooring a Zahniser's Marina -- that would simplify the logistics of picking up the girls and would also enable us to take advantage of the pool and laundry the Marina offers.

Once we arrived at our mooring, we packed up our laundry and dinghy-ed in to check out the facilities. Zahniser's is a large marina with numerous slips, a great restaurant (the Dry Dock, but it's not "dry" :-), a pool, wi-fi --basically everything a cruiser needs. We spent the rest of the morning doing laundry/chores, had lunch at the Pool (great hummus and Turkey with eggplant sandwich).

Now that we are done, let's go have some fun

After lunch we decided to go and visit the local "Calvert Museum" -- this turned out to be a fascinating place; you could pet sting rays and/or skates, watch (large) river otters play in their habitat; explore the kinds of fossils found along the Chesapeake; visit an extensive wooden boat collection and visit the Drum Point lighthouse, which was relocated to the museum when it was decommissioned in the 70's to preserve it.

Sue and some Crepe Myrtle on the way to the museum -- the both look "Grand" :-)

This guy was faster than I was -- river otters are very cute when they play

The Drum Point Lighthouse

Did you know that:

• Rays have stingers and skates don't; rays tend to live on the surface, skates tend to be bottom dwellers.
• The Chesapeake was formed when the oceans rose 20K years ago and "overran" the Susquehanna river channel to the sea.
• The Calvert Cliffs, that 30 mile or so stretch of the Western Shore of the Bay that I mentioned earlier which has no "sailboat friendly" harbors, is a very active fossil collection area. Besides innumerable seashell fossils, many ancient whale, crocodillain and megladon (super sized shark) fossils are found there.
• A megladon could grow to be the size of a "tractor trailer" -- next time you are next to a tractor trailer think about that; if man had lived in the same era, he (or she) would have barely been a "canape" for this giant.

The Megladon's Jaws; some of those teeth are 7" long

• The Chesapeake is the only place in the world where "multi-tree" dugout canoes were built -- called "bugeyes", these boats were built for commerce. Like dugouts, the trees were "hollowed out" by burning, shaped with metal tools, they were then "pinned together" to form the bottom of the hull. Then sides (risers) were added. -- the museum had some 3 and 4 tree bugeyes on in their collectio and 9 tree bugeyes are known to have been built.  See the pictures for more.

Your "standard dugout canoe is on the left (behind the sign); local Indians made them by burning out  a tree trunk and then carving out the shape with sea shells.

This is the inside of a 4 tree bugeye; you can see the trees form the floor of the boat and how the risers were attached with "frames".

The 4 tree bugeye from the outside

OK, OK -- enough of this "educational" stuff -- back to the narrative.

After our tour of the museum, we returned to the Marina, showered, (Jack shaved for the first time in 8 days) and stopped for an appetizer and entree at the Dry Dock restaurant -- all in all, a fun and easy day.