A day in Solomons, MD

Around 4 o'clock this morning, the wind started HOWLING!  It sure was nice to be in a protected anchorage with good holding Chesapeake Bay mud!  Tomorrow, I may not appreciate the good mud when we try to get the hook up, but, it sure was nice today!  The whole, new vessel, unfamiliar ground tackle kept me up for awhile, but I returned to bed before daylight, when Dick and Rudy got up and didn't want to start the generator to make coffee for fear of waking me up!  Coffee instructions?  Light the generator, and turn on the heater.  When the boat gets warm enough, I'm no longer afraid to crawl out from under the covers!

This is such a beautiful little town.  The guys launched the dinghy after breakfast.  There was a lot of discussion about how much of that I ought to post in the blog, but I won't say anything about losing a hat overboard, or an outboard quitting and somebody getting towed back to the boat, or any of the heckling.  I will only say that I was inside, vacuuming, and later washing windows so I could watch the whole show.

After Rudy and Dick pulled the sparkplug and cleaned it, Mercy and I rode with Dick into the fuel pier, and added a little gasoline to the gas oil mix.  The folks at the Solomons Yatch Center are very nice.  They even gave me internet access! 

Then we up to the Calvert Marine Museum. 

What a cool museum!  They had a lot of paleontological artifacts and fossils from the area, great exhibits, some local history, some local maritime history, and several live marine exhibits.  I was so impressed with the museum, I would recommend it to anyone!

If that wasn't enough, they had a live otter exhibit outside.  When we walked out the door, the pair of otters spotted Mercy, and raced over to the side of the tank to investigate.  Mercy was very interested, but never broke position.  (Good dog!)  When I realized the otters weren't afraid, I approached the glass and let Mercy say hello.  We walked around, and they followed us everywhere.  As we started to walk away from their wet area, they followed us to their dry habitat, and ran over to the glass where they tried to smell Mercy as hard as she tried to smell them.  I think it was the highlight of the day for a dog, and a couple of otters! 

When Dick and I returned to the boat, Rudy went to the museum as well.  Then he and Dick went to try to see a replica of the British revenue cutter SULTANA, which they couldn't get aboard, but it was fun to see from a distance.

When the guys returned, we all went to eat at Stony's Kingfisher, which has great seafood, and a dinghy dock!

Tomorrow, our destination is the Great Wicomico River, to the dock belonging to a friend and a former work colleague of mine and Dick's.