For Smith Island, the Inn goes on
In an earlier post, I gave recommendations of great summer getaways. I neglected to mention Tylerton on Smith Island -- not becuase it isn't a wonderful place, but because I didn't know if there was anywhere to stay. (Besides private homes.)
When I was last on the island in October, Leroy and Sharryl Friesen, the warm hosts of Tylerton's Inn of Silent Music, were preparing to sell the place and move to the Midwest. The couple hoped that someone else would buy it and keep it as an inn. But there was lots of interest in the well-kept property as a private home, and not so many buyers interested in running an inn on a remote island town about an hour's boat ride from Crisfield.
The Friesens worried that, without the inn, Tylerton would lose a critical part of its income (tourism), while the rest of Maryland would miss out on a chance to experience an island out of time, as Tom Horton chronicleed so eloquently in his book by the same name.
Well, I called this week and as it turns out, the Inn is still open. Rob and Linda Kellogg, a couple of landlubbers who most recently lived in Colorado, saw the place, loved it and bought it late last year (sorry I was late on this.) Linda, a former principal at Sparrows Point Middle School who is also a personal chef, said she's not going to try to copy what Sharryl did in the kitchen (she made great corn salads, frittatas and soft-shell crabs), and the food will be local seafood with an Italian spin. But everything else -- the canoes, the bikes, the porch with the waves lapping below -- will be pretty much as it was.
Asked how she likes the island, Linda had this to say:"It’s a wonderful place to be. The people are are probably the most genuine, caring and open people that we have ever lived among... people are always asking us- 'How did the islanders treat you as outsiders?' We say, 'we’re not outsiders. We have never, from the day we got here, felt like outsiders. They’re just incredible people. "
