Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Category: Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series

 by 

5 things to know about Tangier Island, Virginia

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes – SBFL* 5 – PLANNED & VISITED – It was a sunny day in late summer. The Chesapeake Bay waters are as green as in the Caribbean and as tame as in a pond, almost. On a midsize tour boat mostly filled with tourists, we are on our way to Tangier Island, Virginia, in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.   Right after departure from Crisfield, Maryland, the captain’s deep voice comes over the loudspeakers, announcing a few things that he has perhaps repeated a few thousand times before.  “Looking to our left,” he says, “you will notice a couple of white buildings. This is Glenwood Evans & Son Fish Company....

 by 

Awesome undertakers, barbers, repairmen, hunters and $1,144,600

This is Part 2 of the previous blog post – A general, bushwacking, body booting and $1,144,600 send me to Crisfield, Maryland. … Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes – SBFL 3* – VISITED – Regardless of how you look at it, my story started, without exaggeration, a few thousand years ago, honestly.  Definitely not the $1,444,600 part, but the need to build and use some kind of decoy to lure ducks to hunt them has been around in North America at least 2,000 years. I will let Rob Buchanan of Sports Illustrated tell you that part of the story in his 1985 article, “When it came to duck decoys, the Paiute Indians made them to...

 by 

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...

 by 

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...