MD: Solomon's - local culture

Day 353
No Boat Travel

We planned to visit the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum today, but our plans were foiled when Clark discovered the museum is closed on Mondays. Oh well, cross that one off the "to do" list. Instead we took our bicycles and went out to explore the town of Solomons, Maryland.

First we checked out some sites along the water.

View of "the narrows" at Solomons, MD

View of  Back Creek 

During our exploration we visited another local marina and found our friend's boat - Fryedaze at the marina. We knew the boat was in the area since we just saw the Frye's last night, but we were surprised to find their boat quite by accident. Afterwards, as we biked in the area, I found a car with eyelashes and implored Clark to take a picture for me.

Cute car we saw in Solomons, MD

The town now known as Solomon's Island had two other names. Originally knows as Bourne's Island in 1680, the name changed to Somervell's Island in 1740 and finally to Solomon's Island in 1867. The name changed to Solomons after Isaac Solomon opened his oyster packing plant here.

We biked down the "main drag" of the town and saw a few shops, restaurants, ice cream shops (both soft serve and dipped), and the boardwalk.

Memorial to Fishermen and Boat Builders
Chesapeake Bugeye Boat Built in Solomons, MD

 A boardwalk with periodic historical markers follows along the water in Solomons. We walked the length of the boardwalk filling our heads with tidbits of data about the local area. For example, we learned the importance of the Patuxent River during the War of 1812.

Solomons Maryland Boardwalk and Gazebo

 Across the street from the boardwalk sat a cute, old church built in 1889.

St. Peter's Church c. 1889
Solomons, MD

We rode our bikes through town and back to the water's edge where we found the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL). Multiple buildings comprise this research facility which felt to me like a small college campus. CBL has a long, gated pier out into the water to sample the waters of the Chesapeake and facilitate their research.

CBL - Chesapeake Biological Laboratory

As we biked back through town to visit our next stop - the Calvert Marine Museum, we passed a sight that made me think of my granddaughter, Sierra. She is Mickey and Mini Mouse "crazy" and we passed two ducks dressed as these characters.

Mickey and Mini Duck??
Note the live Mr. and Mrs. Mallard Duck next to the statues!

All that biking made for hard work. When we came by the ice cream shop offering dipped ice cream, Clark bought himself an ice cream cone before we continued on to the museum.

Hershey's Ice Cream!

After Clark finished his ice cream treat (3 scoops for $2.67 and that was a small), we visited the oyster canning museum just down the street. I found the displays at the museum interesting but the amount of verbiage that went with them was overwhelming.

One of two displays showing varieties and sizes of oysters

Old-time sign advertising Chesapeake Bay Oysters

Behind the oyster packing plant we found the docks used by the oyster boats.

Oyster Packing Plant Dock

Oyster Shucking Stations with wooden platforms to keep
the workers from standing in the debris from their work.

Weigh station - workers were paid by the bushel
prompting workers to shuck the oysters at a high rate of speed

View from the canning room
where the oysters were washed and weighed

Sadly, too much harvesting of oysters, the introduction of foreign parasites, and pollution led to the decline of oysters and consequently the oyster industry. Several hurricanes have also had devastating effects on oyster beds in more recent years.

The oyster packing plant was a small, free portion of the Calvert Marine Museum. After our tour of the oyster plant, we biked down the road to the main museum. This museum is more diverse in its interests than the name implies. We saw fossils, dinosaur bones, live fish and turtles, a boat house, a lighthouse, and a fresh-water otter display.

Very bored fish going round and round in a small tank

Fishing Charter Boat

Boats on Display in Boat House

Fresh-water Otter native to Maryland

The Drum Point Lighthouse provided the highlight of the museum tour. A guide took us out to the lighthouse and walked us through the structure floor-by-floor. He explained that  the lighthouse operated from 1883 to 1962 at the entrance to the Patuxent River. A company picked up the lighthouse and moved it to its current location at the museum for preservation purposes in 1975. According to the guide the company moved the lighthouse for free as a fine for dumping construction materials into the Patuxent River. He said they were never made to clean up their debris from the waterway.

Drum Point Lighthouse
at Calvert Marine Museum

Furnished as it was at turn of the century

Outside walkway around lighthouse

Fresnel Lens at the lighthouse

View from the Lighthouse

Another day of biking and getting culture wore me out. We headed back to the marina after our museum tour and hit the pool for an hour or so until they kicked us out. Sadly the pool closed at 6:00! Clark was having tremendous fun playing "find the toy at the bottom of the pool" with a new friend who was probably no more than ten years old. After a marina staff member came over and told me I needed to leave, I passed on the disappointment to Clark who practically pouted when he learned he had to get out of the water.

We ended the day with dinner out with my daughter-in-law, Heather's, maid of honor, Meghan, and her spouse, Olivia. Meghan recommended we eat at Stoney's Kingfishers. We found the food tasty and relatively inexpensive. It has been a number of years since we last saw them and it was fun to reconnect.