Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Category: Maryland

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The Bay, the eighth sea

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes – It is a late February Sunday afternoon in the Chesapeake Bay. A bright, sunny winter day started with cardinals singing outside our window. Now, the daylight is fading away with a wonderful sunset, preparing to proudly display its colors. Limitless shades of blue, pink, yellow, orange, and red streak across the evening sky. Soon, the surface of the water also reflects those beautiful, harmonious colors, saying goodby to the daylight and welcoming the night. The honking of a flock of geese flying by reminds me that even the night is alive in the Chesapeake Bay. There is something about wanting to take photos and freeze those special moments in...

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In search of green waters

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes – *SBFL 1 – PLANNED – Here in the midst of winter in the upper Chesapeake Bay, with nighttime temperatures dropping down as far as 14 degrees Fahrenheit, I started planning my first stop of the Slow Boat to Florida (a.k.a. SBFL) round-trip journey. (See my blog post: SBFL – Slow Boat to Florida.) I estimate I will do 30 or more stops by the time I come back home to SBFL 0, perhaps after 6 months or so. Ambitious — maybe or maybe not, we’ll see. One of my two inspirations for this journey is a 1958 National Geographic essay titled, “Slow Boat to Florida,” by the late Dorothea...

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Milliarium Aureum – Golden Milestone

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes – SBFL* Stop 0 – PLANNING – The Milliarium Aureum, also known by the translation Golden Milestone or Zero Milestone, was a monument, probably of marble or gilded bronze, erected by Emperor Caesar Augustus near the Temple of Saturn in the central Forum of Ancient Rome. All roads were considered to begin at this monument and all distances in the Roman Empire were measured relative to it. It is believed to be the literal origin for the maxim that “all roads lead to Rome.” On it, perhaps, were listed all the major cities in the empire and distances to them, although the monument’s precise location and inscription remain matters of...

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A lost colonial town

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes – Recently, a Scottish Weekend program took us to a fascinating spot on the banks of the South River in the Chesapeake Bay. (North 38 degrees 56’ and West 76 degrees 32’) We didn’t realize until much later that we could have gone by boat and docked there, rather than driving. We discovered a lost colonial town that we could do a day trip to with our boat. Back in its day, the town had up to 300 dwellings, a tavern, and a ferry boat that crossed the Chesapeake Bay’s South River.  Apparently, ferries were a critical link in the colonial transportation system. By the 1730s, nearly every road in...