Sunday, August 30, 2009

Eastern Shore


Friday we got back from a week at the Eastern shore. Kevin's parents had rented a place on the water and had kindly invited us to stay with them. So we packed up the many, many things you need to accommodate an almost two-year old and a newborn and we hit the road! We rented a small fishing boat and took it with us. Sadly, we had the boat almost ENTIRELY full of kiddo gear (pack n play, swing, etc). It's amazing how much STUFF kids actually require to survive. Ok, perhaps we bring the stuff for them so WE'LL survive. Hmm...

We stayed in a sleepy little town called Crisfield, MD which claims to be the "seafood capital of the world". There wasn't much to do in town, but there was plenty of crabbing to be done as well as general relaxing. While my life was pretty much the "usual routine" with the kids, I did get some much-needed naps and enjoyed the fruits of the daily crab runs. We ate some form of crab (steamed crabs, crab dip, crab cakes) everyday and enjoyed every bit of it. Unfortunately, Kevin and I had a catastrophe the night before we left for Crisfield and realized that our entire deep freezer had thawed because a strap had kept it from shutting properly. So we also had about 8lbs of shrimp and some additional crab to bring with us. Talk about a feast!

We caught blue crabs every single day, either from our boat or from the dock behind the rental house.


Getting ready to steam 'em.


The view from our backyard.

Thursday we took a boat trip over to Tangier Island (in Virginia).


This island is really remote (it took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get there) and only has a few cars. Most people get around on golf carts and are fisherman. I can't imagine how one would build a house on the island as there's no big commercial businesses like Home Depot, Walmart, etc. In fact, the grocery store is a little ma and pa general store. They have one police officer, no jail, one school for K-12th grade and no hospital or permanent doctor on the island. We took a golf cart tour around the island (which took all of 10-15 minutes) and in wondering what the kids did for fun I saw a few chucking rocks into a marshy area. I guess that answered my question!

Crab shanty's just off the main dock at Tangier Island. These are sloughing houses for soft shelled crabs.

Walking down a "street" on Tangier Island.

No comments: