Tuesday, August 30

Beautiful morning in Annapolis and many folks were out and about downtown sipping on their coffee, strolling their babies, walking their dogs, etc.    This is a very dog-friendly town with restaurants and shops all welcoming the critters - in fact, last night at the Middleton Tavern, a lady near us had her little pooch on her lap while eating and another large dog was tied up at the entrance and given a bowl of water by the waitress!!!

We left around 9 and had a comfy 4 hours on the Chesapeake arriving at Solomon's Island (southern Maryland) at 1:00.   We are at Zahniser's Yachting Center and it is full of boats - this particular area of the Chesapeake (from Annapolis on) is big-time sailboat country.    The marina has complimentary bikes for boaters to use, so we each took one and checked out the boardwalk and had a wonderful lunch at "Stoney's Kingfisherman" - I had a rockfish gyro that was excellent along with Mark's rockfish sandwich.

Mark rode off to West Marine and I walked a while checking out some shops - not too much here, but quite popular in high tourist season - several restaurants.     We met on our bikes and toured the Calvert Marine Museum - very interesting with sea otters putting on a little show, going up in a lighthouse that was furnished and lots of memorabilia from all phases of boating/fishing in this area thru the years. 

Drum Point Lighthouse - charming!

  Sooo much good crab out here too and any ole way you like it - crab bisque soup, she-crab soup, crab balls, crab cakes, crab this and crab that!    It's sooo good - but sure have to be on the watch (4 eyes) dodging those crab pots on the water!    They can sure pop up not of nowhere!

Had a good report from Linda (Dad's nurse) - he's eating good and going to dining room once or 2x a day!!!

Solomon's Island had a lot of damage from Irene - several areas are still without power, lots of trees down (heard the whirring of the chain saws) and schools will not resume till at least Thursday. 

And now another glitch in the cruising plans - south of Norfolk, the Great Bridge Lock suffered major damage from Irene and not sure when it will reopen?    The other option to get thru that area is the Dismal Swamp, but they have many fires that are burning...   So....Mark is busy trying to figure this out - Plan B, C, D, etc.????    Our plan had been to get to the New Bern, NC area and leave Catrina for 2 months as that's as far south we could travel till after hurricane season (11/15).   So....may be leaving Catrina in Norfolk???

Mark has been reading online some horror stories from upstate NY and all the damage Irene brought on  areas where we were just a few weeks ago.   The Erie Canal is completely closed with boats stranded and and some of the lock houses are gone.   Oh my.....so hard to comprehend.    The town of Waterford where we tied up along the wall with farmer's market, nice downtown area, etc. is the end of the Erie Canal lock system and now totally under water.    They were expecting heavy rain but not devastation.   They got 13".    The pictures are incredible - what horrific damage to this beautiful area.    Also in Albany, docks broke loose and boats were piled in a big heap! 

 Seeing and reading all this makes our latest challenge so very insignificant!