Xenophilia

Imagine one of the most perfect weather weekends possible. That’s what was in store for Mark and I as we embarked on a visit to the Eastern Shore of Maryland–a visit long overdue for me in my nearly six years of living in the Washington, DC. Despite a late start on Saturday morning, August 12th, we crawled through the Bay Bridge traffic congestion and at Route 662, detoured south at Wye Mills. While free of traffic, this little back road crisscrossed Route 50 three times, requiring us to wait for a break in the fast-moving traffic to get across. I’m not sure if it saved time, but eventually it lead us into the town of Easton. We took a minimal detour west of Easton towards Saint Michael’s and Tilghman Island, but stopped at Newcomb where a bridge crossed one of the many inlets of the Chesapeake. A side road piqued our curiosity, so we ventured past saltbox houses and long tree-lined driveways to bayside mansions. The path led us to a tiny hamlet called Royal Oak, just one mile from Newcomb yet both had post offices.

Without further ado, we returned to the main road and continued south towards Cambridge. We crossed a long bridge approaching the city. To our right was an unusual structure that looked like large sails of a ship suspended with steel poles. The Cambridge Visitor’s Center was complete with a little park, impressive playground equipment, a boardwalk of sorts, the sail structure and another monument and the actual tourist office packed with endless brochures of Maryland attractions. That day happened to be the annual Seafood Feast-I-Val, but because of the timing and cost, we didn’t attend. We did, however, drive through the city in an attempt to find the downtown. We ended up deep in residential neighborhoods that turned out to be quite far from the city center that was really right off the highway. We stopped in at the Cambridge Grill for a late breakfast, then browsed through the main street antique shops before continuing south. At this point we wanted to get to Crisfield and decided rather than going east to Salisbury and then back southwest, we would cut through back roads in a more direct southerly direction. At Hebron, we turned on Route 162 which took us to the pleasantly surprising hamlet of Whitehaven. As we drove around the corner at the entrance to the town, I glimpsed a sign that said something about a ferry. The road curved again and suddenly there was a stop sign followed immediately by the road leading directly into a large creek. To the left was a large bed and breakfast in one of the most romantic hideaways I’d seen in Maryland. I turned right at the stop sign along the waterfront street, although boats and outbuildings blocked the river view. On the other side, quaint houses lined the street in perfectly orderly fashion. There must have been about 10 houses in the whole town, and other than the inn there was a church with the steeple being repaired on the ground, and a community building/museum with a historical sign. When we rounded the single block of the town and reached the stop sign again, the ferry had arrived and we waited while the operator returned from his tiny stationhouse. The short crossing was free, and I took several photos of the little town and the other side, as a truck waited for us to cross so he could cross the other direction.

A few more crossroads and villages later, we arrived at the town of Princess Anne, county seat of Somerset County. A town I’d read about in a sociology course in college, it was an historical but tiny place with a few Victorian homes and historical buildings. As we stopped to take a few pictures, a woman in a van pulled up and asked for money. Another car pulled in behind her and I wasn’t sure if the driver wanted money also or just wanted to warn us about her (or curse her for beating him to us). Either way they left and so did we.

Starting in Princess Anne, I noticed a trend in this part of Maryland with funeral homes being located in the largest, most elaborate houses in town. Princess Anne’s funeral home was an unusual building with several levels and a roof that remembled bubbles, but with normal roofing. I observed this in at least two other towns, if not more.

We pulled into Crisfield just before 4 pm. It was somewhat anticlimactic, although I don’t know what I expected would await me there. The downtown, which was seemingly located on a spoke off the main entrance road, looked as if it had seen better days. The portion of the main road that ended at the water was more “active,” if that word could describe it. There were a few restaurants and businesses, and several high-rise condominiums were plunked at the end of the town and looked ridiculously out of place. The tide was slightly high, so water flooded the marina parking lot and part of the entrance to one of the condo’s parking garage entrances. We drove around the town, making a couple loops of the main road, and then discovered the tourist office on a side road, where we picked up even more brochures and made our decision to have dinner here since it was the place to have crab. By the time we finished browsing, it was 5 o’clock and we were hungry enough to have a meal, yet didn’t really feel like the 2-hour messy crab feast. We settled on crabcakes, sweet corn and hush puppies (and coleslaw and potato salad) and a couple Coronas.

Towards the conclusion of our meal, we pondered what to do next. We’d obviously missed the ferry to Smith Island and with the next day being Sunday it didn’t seem possible to include that in this weekend’s itinerary. We could have stayed in Crisfield, but it was pretty early and there wasn’t much left to do, so Mark suggested going to Rehoboth. Beach weekend. Summertime. Party atmosphere. I’d never experienced that, so it seemed like a good idea to me. I was concerned with our not having motel reservations, but we both thought that we would get there in about an hour and a half, find a room, maybe shower up and then be ready to go out. So we headed northeast through Pocomoke City and Snow Hill. I had a craving for an ice cream product, so we stopped in Berlin and promptly discovered an ice cream shop right in the center of town. The town was very picturesque and enticing for a return trip. Rayne’s Reef Luncheonette turned out to be the site of filming for portions of the movie Runaway Bride. Signed photographs of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and other photos graced the walls, and a director’s chair sat in the corner. Our milkshakes arrived and tasted like the heaven that they were. A few sips later, we were back in the car heading north to Delaware as dusk was setting in.

We arrived at Rehoboth probably around 9, and discovered at the first hotel we stopped at that everything was sold out and we should head north. Just outside of town we pulled into a motel that turned out to be sold out from the couple who had just gotten there ahead of us. We continued north where there were no hotels at all until Milford, and the same thing happened: just sold out and so is all of Milford. Next we headed to Dover and the first hotel was sold out. We decided to head south on Route 13 and if we couldn’t find a place to stay by the time we got to Denton, MD that we would just head back to Rockville. Luckily a couple miles south of the city we found the Shamrock Inn and got one of the last rooms for $75. Since we were way too far from Rehoboth to venture back to it, we decided to experience what Dover had to offer.

It took awhile to get our bearing, as the road marking and map didn’t seem to correspond, but we eventually made it to the quiet downtown, where all was deserted except for the few bars. Our first stop was an Irish pub, discernible from the wail of a young woman attempting karaoke which was audible from at least two blocks away where we parked. Once inside, it was impossible to see the end of the bar with the clouds of smoke billowing about. A pool table crowded the entrance and as we dodged poolsticks and air force guys trying to buy beer, we noticed that the karaoke attendant and the current singer were wearing bathrobes. A glance around revealed a few others in bedroom attire and few woman had stuffed animals. Since there was no place to sit or really even stand, and the smoke was just too much, we exited with a stumbling drunk woman, who vehemently denied her inebriation to friends begging to call her a cab. The bar across the street was quiet and through the window we could see only a handful of people. A young buff man was at the door organizing some things and as we tried to enter he told us that a collared shirt was required to enter. Upon seeing our faces in disbelief, he reiterated “yeah, collared shirts” as if he also thought the notion was a little preposterous for a town the size of Dover. We begged to learn of another place we could spend a Saturday night, and he pointed us in the direction of Smithers and mentioned another bar. We entered the back of Smithers through an outdoor patio that resembled someone’s private house party. The bar, it turns out, is located in an old Victorian mansion that must daylight as a restaurant judging from the tables with place settings and flowery wallpaper. In one of the rooms a live cover band was belting out tunes as tipsy patrons sang along, cuddling their partners for the evening. The crowd included a lot of attractive men, several with buzz cuts, some with baseball or farm implement hats and some with long straggly hair, and a few unattractive overweight and/or stuck-up women.

The band turned out to be pretty good for a cover band and with the intimate quarters in the old house it was akin to a house party. So, all in all the detour to Dover was pretty cool.

The next day we stopped at Rehoboth for a bit, ending up in Ocean City at the Crab Shack, which was nestled in amongst several beach apartment buildings. The dining room was a picnic table on a patch of sand in front of the building, which was literally a shack. We had delicious seafood as the evening sun inched its way to its western slumber. After a dessert stop in Salisbury, we were back home by 11.