Maryland Blue Crabs

July 23-25, 2008
St. Michaels, Maryland

St. Michaels is as idyllic as it looks like it would be on a map. Situated on a the tip of a narrow piece of land that juts into the Chesapeake Bay, the town has worked hard to preserve its picturesque main street and older homes near the harbors. I can only imagine the building regulations that exist there in order to keep it this way.

We stayed in a Walmart parking lot in nearby Easton, which is also a cool town with a much more diverse Hispanic community. The next day we moved the RV to the parking lot of a local recreational park just outside of town, underneath a water tower. Strangely, there were no RV parks for 60 miles, private or state-run.

Famous for blue crabs, we couldn't leave Maryland without experiencing them. We checked a few restaurants, but they seemed way too expensive, so we chose to sit outside of Big Al's Seafood Market on a picnic table and ate a half dozen jumbo crabs that they cooked for us. It was perfect, and John, who worked there was very patient in showing us each step of how to clean a crab. It's quite a production, but truly worth the work.

I hate to say it, but it is so great to travel without loads of tacky billboards, so prevalent in the South, especially Georgia. Signs such as "Jesus Allows U-Turns" and the like I can do without, permanently. And, Maryland gets the prize for best recycling! These colorful egg-like bins are everywhere, and offer full recycling, not just aluminum cans that you get in the South, if you are lucky. I think areas of the south have quite a lot to learn from northern states.