La Trappe Creek on the Choptank

We left our anchorage on Harris Creek at 9 a.m. on Friday, October 4 for a cruise to Cambridge and later to another anchorage in the Choptank. The weather was quite blustery. There were  1-2 foot waves but we were reasonably sheltered in the Choptank basin. We made our way up the Choptank River noting the place we planned to anchor that night on La Trappe Creek.  We made our way to Cambridge, MD, the county seat of Dorchester County where we planned to explore for a few hours.

We tied up at the town dock where a friendly local boat owner gave us a hand.   We chatted with him for awhile.  He and his wife had a sailboat and a condo next to our dock. They sail to the Bahamas and beyond every winter and we compared notes on the various places each of us have traveled to.

We walked into town which had some very attractive homes near the waterfront.

After a satisfying lunch at  Jimmie & Sook’s, a local spot on the main drag that had good food we visited the Harriet Tubman museum. This small museum provided a good overview of her heroic role in helping to free slaves through the Underground Railroad.  Outside of the little museum was an evocative mural of her painted on the building’s exterior.  There is a much larger commemoration to her outside of town, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park which we unfortunately were unable to visit this time. 

Other interesting murals were scattered throughout the city. 

It turns out that Cambidge is the inspiration of the fictional town of Patamoke that plays a central role in Chesapeake, the historical novel about the Chesapeake that Lynn is currently reading, a fact she only became aware of the next day!

We headed back to LaTrappe Creek where we explored three different lovely anchorages before deciding on the first one that had two other boats in it. It seemed to offer the best protection from the wind and the space was large enough to accommodate several boats.

We skipped dinner that night due to our hearty lunch and were witness to a world class sunset. Later we watched The Shipping News, an excellent adaptation of the book of the same name.