Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories.

Tagged: Lifestyle

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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....

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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...