THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605240071
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: 169 lines
MANY MARYLANDERS, especially the city dwellers from Baltimore and even Annapolis, speak of the almost spiritual feeling that comes over them as they drive east on U.S. 50 and soar upward, as if toward heaven, over the Bay Bridge toward the place they call the Eastern Shore.
If it is not heaven, this flat tidal land where life still moves at a slower pace, it is at least another world. Certainly it is the antithesis of life in the fast lane, life in the urban corridor.
It's sort of like Virginia's Eastern Shore, that disconnected appendage that is bathed by both the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Maryland has a bit of Atlantic shore, too, but the name Eastern Shore to Marylanders means the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The bay is Maryland's heart . . . and, with apologies to Western Marylanders, its soul as well.
It is quiet, quaint, tranquil, picturesque; it is rich farmland where wheat, corn and tomatoes thrive, land bisected by rivers, creeks, inlets and bays where watermen still labor long and hard to harvest the Chesapeake's decreasing bounty; and it has a collection of charming, sometimes historic villages that could be anyone's candidate for the title of ``Hometown, U.S.A.''
The Eastern Shore is sort of a microcosm of one of the state's clever mottos: ``Why is Maryland so small? Years ago we took out all the boring stuff.''
I visited the area in search of weekend getaways, and one thing's for shore: I'm going to have to go back. Here's what I found.
Kent Island. It sits in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and provides the eastern footing for the Bay Bridge. It is sort of like, if this really were heaven, this is where the Pearly Gates and St. Peter's admission office would be. When you're here, you're on the Eastern Shore.
I got here just in time for dinner at the Kent Manor Inn, a sprawling, vaguely Victorian structure with 24 guest rooms, all with water views, and porches all across its expansive front. It dates from 1820, has a resident ghost and seems to be eternally posing for a Currier and Ives engraving.
Proprietor Alan Michaels took us through the inn before dinner, even to the cupola, four flights up, where I saw, with a cursory glance, graffiti left by visitors looking for a view as early as 1908. Never did see the ghost.
Just to give you an idea of the delectable dining on the Eastern Shore, here's what chef Dennis Shakan served up:
For appetizer I had a cream crab soup, smooth and buttery with large chunks of crab meat and not a lot of celery and other distractions; touch of sherry on the side. The entree selection included Maryland crab cakes, Crab Imperial, herb-seared salmon, chicken Torino, lamb T-bones, Cioppino Ventamiglia (lobster, mussels, crab, clams, fish and some other stuff), aged filet minon, veal chops, aged prime sirloin, pesto-crusted rack of lamb.
To be truthful, I sampled several of the entrees, then topped it off with coffee, accompanied by shredded chocolate, raw sugar, whipped cream and cinnamon sticks.
After which, I was ready for bed. But first, it's on to. . . .
Chestertown. Overnight at the White Swan Tavern, the oldest (1733) building in town, restored to its Colonial elegance as a delightful B&B in 1978-79, after extensive archaeological works on the site. Many of the most significant artifacts are displayed in one of the tavern's public rooms.
This is an old seaport town on the Chester River, a tributary of the Chesapeake. It was a major stop for north-south land traffic in Colonial times, an off-the-beaten-path place today.
It's a lived-in town with detailed brochure that enables you to take your own walking tour of the beautifully preserved old homes along brick sidewalks on tree-shaded streets.
Nine of the original land grants are still in the same families, although all have been reduced in size. People that come here tend to stay. It's that kind of place.
John Parker, who with wife Marcy runs the nearby Parker House B&B, says Chestertown is ``like that town in the movie Doc Hollywood, except the mayor doesn't dress up like a squash, like Mayberry without a sheriff and a goofy deputy.'' It's a town without a Wal-Mart. So far.
It's a town where you can pick up the newspaper at Scottie's Shoe Store (open 6 a.m.) on the High Street, where you can get your clothes tailored at the Christian Book Store. It's a town that does not look and does not act like a college town, although Washington College, the first named in honor of George Washington, has been here since 1782.
It's a town where a bell tolls the hours from the tower of the Masonic Hall, where there's a monument on a green in the heart of town that honors the Civil War dead from this part of the border state, Confederates on one side, Federals on the other. Erected by a private citizen, James A. Pearce, in 1917, it says,
Under the sod,
the blue and the gray,
Waiting alike
the judgement day.
It's a town where they have an elaborate Halloween parade in which kids throw candy to adults. But most important of all, this is where they have the Chestertown Tea Party on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend.
The 28th re-enactment of the 1774 event took place yesterday. There are fifes and drums and Colonial costumes and horses and everybody gets involved. Eventually, replaying the defiant events of that historic day, a group of men get into an argument and then run down to the wharf at the foot of High Street. They row out to a tall sailing ship and dump tea overboard.
They dump people overboard, too. That wasn't in the original script, but it's more fun.
Lunch at the Imperial Hotel on High Street. With 11 deluxe rooms and two suites, this Victorian jewel has been restored to its 1903 elegance. No, probably better. It has electricity and modern toilets in every room. The good old days weren't always better than today.
Another dining delight: more crabs and other seafood, prepared by chef Rodney Scruggs, plus amazing deserts by his wife, pastry chef Lisa LeClerc Scruggs.
St. Michaels. Located where the Miles River flows into the bay, this little town, was named after the famous archangel. Though sometimes a bit touristy, it has quaint B&Bs, fine dining, interesting shops, a harbor full of boats and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
Once it was a center for privateers, who played havoc with British shipping. This was back before we had settled our differences with that country.
In 1813, according to the story told here, King George sent a naval squadron with orders to ``burn Norfolk, burn Washington, burn Baltimore. And while you're at it, clean out that nest of pirates in St. Michaels too.''
They did attack St. Michaels, but did little more than create a legend of how the townspeople fooled the Brits. The story is that on the night of the attack the residents hung lanterns in the trees outside of town to draw away the British. Apparently, though, the British were driven away by the local militia, and not before one ship's cannon sent a ball through the roof of one house, or down its chimney, according to another version. In either case, the house today is known as the Cannonball House.
St. Michaels' most famous citizen remains Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist who labored here against his will in the 1830s.
Anyone interested in the Chesapeake Bay should spend some time at the 18-acre Maritime Museum. It has a nice collection of working boats, a carved waterfowl display and other memorabilia. The most striking artifact is the 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse, an octagonal, three-story house on stilts that was transported here from its original site.
I stayed at the modern St. Michaels Harbour Inn and Marina on the waterfront, and, following a brief cruise aboard the Lady Patty sailing yacht, dined (more crabs and seafood, of course) at Michael Rork's Town Dock Restaurant.
Next morning, the piece de resistance: breakfast at the Inn at Perry Cabin just outside St. Michaels. This is one of three ultra-elegant properties owned by Sir Bernard Ashley, who was the husband of the late Laura Ashley.
You can imagine how the place is decorated. No, actually you can't. This is not done in theatrical Ashley fabrics such as you might see in the malls, but rather in the style of an English country house, complete with Snooker Room. Antiques are everywhere.
Parts of this sprawling place date back to 1812; no two rooms are alike in design or decor - and that goes as well for Sir Bernard's other two properties, Keswick Hall outside of Charlottesville and Llangoed Hall.
Time to go home. . . and I've only scratched the surface.
Next time I want to go over to Tilghman Island, just beyond St. Michaels, and spend some time with Cap'n Wade Murphy. He's got the oldest working boat on the Chesapeake, the Rebecca T. Ruark, built in 1886. She's a skipjack, the mother of all skipjacks, I suppose, since she was out working the water five years before they began building boats like her and calling them skipjacks.
Murphy, a third-generation waterman with more than a half-century's worth of his own tales to tell, will take you out on Rebecca - $25 for an hour and a half - where you can feel what a waterman's life on the Bay is all about.
Cap'n Wade also offers another on-the-water experience: a six-hour crabbing trip aboard one of his power boats. It's $60 per person, up to six people, and that includes a bushel of crabs per person. If you don't want crabs - why else would you go? - it's only $30. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
The Kent Manor Inn on Kent Island dates from 1820.
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads, take U.S. 13 north
across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and up Virginia's Eastern
Shore to Salisbury, Md., then U.S. 50 west to Cambridge. There you
enter the heart of Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Eating and sleeping: Contact Maryland Tourism for a complete
listing: 217 E. Redwood St., Baltimore, Md. 21298-6349; (800)
543-1036. by CNB