Local travel: Rock Hall
As we've pointed out before too many times on this blog, the oyster harvest is dismal this year. But if there’s hope of seeing anyone coming in from a day of oystering, you’ll probably see it in Rock Hall, the old watermen’s town that is almost directly across the bay from Baltimore but a world away.
Rock Hall is still a very authentic kind of place, where watermen hold dances and everyone seems to know each other. There is some condo creep, but it's far enough up the bay and hard enough to get to that it doesn’t have as much of that as the Lower Shore towns. I love the way Rock Hall looks in the winter, as if frozen in time. The view form the town of Gratitude is especially wonderful.
There are great opportunities to see wintering birds at the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge. Canada Geese, mallards, scaups and tundra swans have all been spotted recently.
As for food, seafood is the specialty, but the Harbor Shack has decent Mexican food, as well. This site will guide you to many local restaurants, depending on your tastes and budget.
Rock Hall is still a very authentic kind of place, where watermen hold dances and everyone seems to know each other. There is some condo creep, but it's far enough up the bay and hard enough to get to that it doesn’t have as much of that as the Lower Shore towns. I love the way Rock Hall looks in the winter, as if frozen in time. The view form the town of Gratitude is especially wonderful.
There are great opportunities to see wintering birds at the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge. Canada Geese, mallards, scaups and tundra swans have all been spotted recently.
As for food, seafood is the specialty, but the Harbor Shack has decent Mexican food, as well. This site will guide you to many local restaurants, depending on your tastes and budget.
I report on the environment and Chesapeake Bay. A native of West Virginia, I have focused mainly on Maryland's environment since moving here in 1983. Along the way, I've crewed aboard a skipjack in the bay, canoed under city streets up the Jones Fall from the Inner Harbor, and gone deep underground in a western Maryland coal mine. Recently, I have been covering the growth and development transforming the landscape. I love seafood, rambles in the country and good stories. I hope to share some here.