St. Mary’s City and Dryden, MD

We continued our journey on the mouth of the Potomac River on Monday, July 13 at 8:20 and headed to St. Mary’s City.  This is a beautiful area that we had visited 5 years ago. We loved it so much that we were eager to visit again. It is a the site of the first capital of Maryland and it’s graced by St. Mary’s College, a small state-funded honors college. The setting is bucolic and perfect for boaters as the college is known for its sailing program. After a short one hour cruise, we arrived there with only one other boat in sight. We dropped anchor, dinghied in and tied up at the school’s large and impressive boat house.

Everything was closed due to COVID so we just strolled through the lovely campus and then over to the historic cemetery that looks out on the St. Mary’s River and the Potomac. There are gravestones dating from the 1600’s!  That’s because St. Mary’s City was the fourth oldest permanent English settlement in the U.S.  It was founded by Lord Calvert and is known for being the birthplace for religious freedom in the U.S. having been established specifically to be a haven for both Catholic and Protestant religious faiths. Unfortunately there are no original dwellings from those early times but some of the buildings have been recreated.

There’s also a replica of one of the ships that brought the original settlers over from England. 

We strolled around the pastoral grounds imagining what life must have been like in this tiny colonial “city” in the new world. Some of the grounds were subdivided to show where archeologists have found traces of structures and other artifacts.

We finally tore ourselves away and headed back to Zendo and on to our final destination for the day, Dennis Point Marina and Campground in the town of Drayden, MD.  It was just a short one hour cruise. 

Tying up at the slip we were assigned was not a fun experience.  We had to back in because there was just a short finger pier and we wanted a starboard tie.  That is usually not a problem, but their tie up posts were not easy and the marina offered no assistance.  After about 30 minutes, we were finally tied up properly.  But when we plugged into the shore power and turned on the AC which was desperately needed after all that work, the AC switched off immediately.  We were so frustrated we were ready to untie everything and leave but Jonny diagnosed a bad power stand on the dock and switched to another one. All good. We went up to the marina office to sign in and pay and learn about the pool and other basic amenities and discovered that the pool was closed! The owner said that COVID requirements were that they couldn’t keep the pool open unless management was on site and management was leaving.  Hence, no pool and obviously no swimming in the river because of the jellyfish!

Oh well, at least we had AC on board. So we went back to Zendo to relax and read.  Oops! No more AC in the salon! It just stopped working.  Jonny was very frustrated.  He did what he could to try to fix it but there wasn’t much he could do. Because there are actually two units, we at least had it in the cabins (bedrooms).  The day was starting to cool off (a tiny bit) but the temps have been in the 90’s.

We settled in and relaxed until the 6:00 FaceTime call we had scheduled with our good friends Peter and Paula in MA. Lynn has known Peter since grammar school and we both know Paula from UConn where all four of us went to college.  We had a great time catching up with them and that call was followed by one with Greg in Charlottesville, another of Lynn’s childhood buddies and then surprisingly a call from Mark in Portland, OR, yet another of Lynn’s childhood friends who she hadn’t seen since the last high school reunion 10 years ago!  What a great bookend to a day that could have been more frustrating than fun!

We finished up the evening with a light salad for dinner and an early night of reading in our cool cabin.  We’ll sign off this entry on a pleasant note with this shot of Zendo in the harbor back in St. Mary’s City.