St. Michaels, MD: Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

 I will readily admit that I am not big on museums when traveling. Unless I’m headed somewhere that is known for their museums (the Louvre in Paris, the Art Institute in Chicago) or it’s pouring rain, I’m probably not going to spend several hours walking around inside a windowless building. Sometimes though, a museum takes you by surprise. The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, located along the water in St. Michaels, Maryland, was one of those pleasant surprises. Spread out over 18 acres along the waterfront, the museum is a mostly outdoor experience (a plus in my book), with several buildings of exhibits & a relocated lighthouse from the 1870’s. In the boatyard, they’re busy restoring Rosie Parks, a skipjack oystering boat from 1955. When we visited, her rotting wood hull had been almost completely replaced with shiny new pine. We chatted for a few minutes with one of the volunteers working on her restoration, as he sanded down a mast for a smaller boat he was helping build.

A highlight of our visit was climbing up into the relocated Hooper Strait Lighthouse. The hands-on exhibit inside the lighthouse offers a realistic glimpse at how lighthouse keepers lived & work. Climb up the spiral staircase to take a look at the huge lens & enjoy the 360 degree view of St. Michaels & the waterfront.

Another highlight of the museum was a visit to Fisherman’s Wharf, a recreated crab shack right along the docks. There we learned from a volunteer all about Maryland’s famous blue crabs & the crabbing & oystering industry that still thrives in the Chesapeake Bay. You can even pull up a crab pot to see if you’ve “caught” anything – the day we were there, the pot was full of feisty, squirming blue crabs.

We never would have visited the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum if our b&b hosts hadn’t insisted on it. I’m certainly glad they did.

If you go…

– if you’re staying in St. Michaels, ask your b&b or hotel for a discount coupon. We were able to get one that saved $6 off admission for both of us. If you’re just visiting St. Michaels for the day, & spend $20 at a local shop, you can also get a discount on admission.

– if you’re only interested in walking around the grounds & not visiting any of the exhibits, the grounds are open to the public after the museum closes. If it’s a nice evening out, the grounds are the perfect place for an evening stroll around sunset.

– you can buy admission tickets at the museum entrance or at the visitor’s center along Talbot Street- parking is available, but if you’re staying in town, the museum is an easy walk- for an extra charge, you can hop aboard the Mister Jim to take a tour of the Chesapeake Bay