Monday, July 18, 2016

Finding Unique Places Along the Way!

We left our nice marina and pool on July 12th to scout out peaceful anchorages and tried to find areas where the nettles were scarce.  Our first stop was less than 10 miles away further up the Rappahannock River in Yopp's Cove (another great name for a location!). No pictures because it was actually just a quiet neighborhood of homes.  And once more we were surrounded by nettles.  So on Wednesday we cruised out of the Rappahannock and turned to port to go further north to the Indian River and found another peaceful neighborhood cove where we dropped anchor and actually pulled up a nettle on the anchor chain, YUCK.
Pretty nice homes all around this comfy cove.  We used our time to dingy to a Marina and hike 2 miles to Kilmarnock to find lunch, then hiked another mile to find a CVS for eye drops, produce stand for fresh veges and a quick run to the grocery where I could not resist buying a heavy bag of cherries because of the great sale price.  Needless to say, the 3 mile walk back to the dingy was an unpleasant hot walk!  But boat magic, a car passed us going the opposite direction, stopped and the Marina owner offered us a ride so she turned around to take us back to the Marina.  We got our 4 miles in at least!!
We moved on to this lovely creek off the Great Wicomico River to find yet more nettles and endured a very hot afternoon enjoying moments of pretend swimming by spraying off with the anchor wash down hose!  If we could have been swimming, this would have been the perfect anchorage. 
So we decided to cross the Chesapeake Bay and see how bad the nettles were on the east side and anchored in the Onancoke River and took a dingy ride to check out the "historic town of Onancoke".   Well it was old but not at all an interesting place except for the bakery with cinnamon rolls for 80 cents! But we got our walk in and did our pretend swimming thing because we just couldn't swim.
 
We had a lovely storm come in to clean our decks and cool things off. 

Then enjoyed a beautiful sunset with the plan to head a short distance to Tangier Island, a unique place.  Let the pictures explain!! 



This very isolated island relies on the success of crab watermen. Each waterman has a shack where he sifts through the crabs, organizes them by size and type and stores some that are losing their shells to become the more valuable soft shelled crabs. The island is slowly eroding away as much as 35 feet per year now! The residents tell their compelling story in a lovely little museum on the island and are open to talking to us tourists about their lives with minimal cell or internet service, one tiny grocery, minimal contact with the mainland and constant worry about flooding.
This is Park's Marina where we tied up along those white washed pilings parallel to the waterway and enjoyed talking with the harbor master, 85 year old Melvin Parks. This was a unique place to stop for a whopping $35 for the tie up and electricity and the opportunity to learn about a real fishing community. 
Tourist ferries arrive daily so some income to the island is made by the few restaurants, gift shops, and ice cream places in this small area.




This is a common sight with family graves in the yards of the homes so the dead can be watched over and cared for and the shallow, often flooded graves can be monitored for water damage.
We never figured out why there were dozens of soda machines like this scattered around the island, all plugged in and making soda available every so often. Note, when we took our usual hour walk, we easily walked completely around the island and added a side trip to another small island next door.

Just chillin on the bridge doing a Sudoku on this incredibly peaceful waterway where the best crab in the Chesapeake is caught and processed.  Appreciate the price of a good crab cake and realize folks are depending on that income to live and save their island! A very unique place to visit! 


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