Last Wednesday we headed to Oxford, Maryland, a small town on the Tred Avon River.
Rich uses electronic charts to navigate, but I still want paper charts. This is my “road map” for the last part of the trip into Oxford.We passed the town beach on our way up the river to the marina. Then we walked from the marina to a restaurant down the road that went along the river and beach.More Civil War history.The Oxford Wharf. There’s a car ferry that goes from here to Bellevue, across the river.We had a late lunch at this restaurant the day we got to Oxford. Can you see the problem with the name?The second night we had dinner at the restaurant at the Robert Morris Inn.Robert Morris InnOur dinners were great, but the desserts were amazing! Rich had this – Pavlova – meringue filled with whipped cream and drizzled with fresh blueberries and strawberries.I had Red Velvet Smith Island cake. Smith Island cakes are a specialty of that island, have 9-10 layers, come in a variety of flavors, and are incredibly good!Thursday night the full moon rose like a harvest moon. My iPhone camera didn’t do justice to how beautiful it was.
Friday we headed back down the Tred Avon and up the Choptank River to Cambridge. With a population of over 13,000, Cambridge is the largest town/city we’ve been in since D.C.
It seems that everywhere we’ve been on the East Coast has so much history from the 1600s on. And there are plaques and pamphlets to tell you all about it. We did a walking tour – here are some things we saw.
The county courthouse, built in 1854, to replace the previous one that had burned down. Harriet Tubman’s niece and her two children escaped from the slavery auction block here in 1850. A century later the building was damaged by a bomb during the trial of H. Rap Brown, who had been involved in racial violence in Cambridge.This is the oldest surviving office building, built in 1800. Lawyers weren’t allowed to practice from their homes, so Josiah Bayly built this small building on his property. The brick wall on the left is part of a long wall surrounding a cemetary.We had lunch at Snappers on Saturday and then went next door to J. M. Clayton Seafood Company to buy crab meat. The seafood company claims to be the oldest crab factory in the world and has been run by the same family since 1890. We bought 2 cans of pasteurized crab which they said will keep for several weeks in the fridge – we will eat well!This is where we picked up our crab – no fancy retail counters here!Crab boats docked next to the seafood company. All of the crab meat is picked by hand. Their website says a good picker can pick 25-40 pounds of crab meat each day.An interesting statue at the marinaThe Choptank River Lighthouse, which is at the Marina. This is a replica of the lighthouse that was at the mouth of the river, from 1921-1964. It was dismantled then and replaced by a spider buoy signal. This replica was built in 2012. The boat is the type the lighthouse keeper would use to get to the lighthouse, which was situated about 2 miles out.This lighthouse is a screw pile lighthouse. We have a few of them on the Bay, but this is the first one we’ve been able to visit.A Fresnel lensA few days ago we heard Julie Mason on Sirius POTUS talking about mixing ranch dressing with salsa. She thought it sounded too weird and we thought the same thing. So imagine our surprise tonight when we went to a Mexican restaurant and they gave us a bowl of ranch along with a bowl of salsa. Of course we had to try it – dip the chip in ranch and then in the salsa. Guess what? It’s really good! Has anyone else heard of this?
