Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Category: Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series

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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...

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Before crossing the Maryland line

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes – SBFL* 2 – PLANNED – My Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Intracoastal Waterway trip was inspired by National Geographic authors Dorothea and Stuart E. Jones. (See SBFL) In their 1958 National Geographic article, they describe how they sailed down the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis and stopped in Solomons, Maryland, and then crossed the state line over to Virginia. My second source of inspiration, Allan C. Fisher, covered a bit more territory above Solomons in the Chesapeake Bay in his 1973 book, America’s Inland Waterway, published also by National Geographic. While I intend to follow the path of both authors in this 2019 boating season, I also plan to do a...

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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...