Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Author: Kazaz

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Smith Island – The watermen and heritage of the Chesapeake Bay can be experienced in a modern-day version of Colonial Williamsburg

Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes – SBFL 4* – VISITED – Prepare to slow down, way down, get on island time and adjust your expectations by following the recommendation provided by one of the gift items on the island. It reads “Keep calm and put your flip-flops on.” Don’t look for a quick touristy fix that you can take in within 2½ hours. Plan for your trip in advance, consider my recommendations below, and you will be rewarded with a great experience — the living version of a heritage museum. If you catch a boat to Smith Island from Crisfield, MD or just simply arrive with your own boat, know that island time has been...

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Experience Speaks

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes – *SBFL – PLANNED – As my regular readers know, my inspiration to do the over 2,400-mile round trip on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) came from a 1958 National Geographic article titled, “Slow Boat to Florida.” Hence, this series of SBTF blogs. At the moment, we are in the planning stage. However, I am determined not to say at the end of our planned six-month-long trip, “We made too many wrong mistakes,” as Yogi Berra once said. So, as we are planning our ICW trip on our boat, Life’s AOK, my wife and I decided to seek out the wisdom of those who have done it before and let the...

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Smith Island, its famous cakes and all

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes – SBFL*4 – PLANNED – “Smith [Island] has no municipal building, no jail–indeed, no government,” wrote Allan C. Fisher, Jr., in his 1973 book, America’s Inland Waterway. The book is one of two information resources of the National Geographic that I am using for planning a journey and comparing how it was then versus how it is now in selected spots of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). I want to see how much, if any, the passing decades have changed these locales. You can reach Smith Island, as with all of my locations that I write about, by boat, of course, or by land, first going to Crisfield, Maryland, then...

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A general, bushwhacking, body booting, and $1,144,600 send me to Crisfield, Maryland

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes – SBFL* 3 – VISITED – What took me to Crisfield, Maryland, was an eye-popping $1,144,600, somehow tied to body booting and bushwacking, and it all started with a general. It has been an unexpected journey to Crisfield, Maryland. Decoys ducks and an Army Major General My journey was kicked-started by a great, 91-years-young, retired Army Major General, Warren Magruder, an avid fishing and hunting enthusiast. When I say avid enthusiast, trust me, he is. As was covered by The Baltimore Sun back in July 2010, he caught a black drum fish in the Chesapeake Bay that was 50-inches long, 36-inches around, and weighing about 70 pounds. His pedigree is equally...