Smith Island and Crisfield

Tuesday, August 30

Got up in the morning and moved our boats over to the Somers Cove Marina right by our anchorage.  This is a HUGE Marina with room to slip over 300 boats here.  We finally rinsed down the boat.  It was pretty dirty.  We took our bikes to the city dock and picked up a ferry to take us over to Smith’s Island.  The ferries leave Crisfield at 12:30 and leave Smith’s island at 3:45 PM. The ferry ride is $25 +5 dollars for our bikes. Smith’s island is a small island that you can only get to by boat.

There are 3 little bitty towns in Smith’s Island, Ewell and Rhode Point on one part of the Island and Taylorton ( that you have to take a boat to get there)  is the other town.  Larry (the boat captain) is quite a character.  He starts at Taylorton, at 7:00 AM, picks up people and children and takes them to Ewell to the elementary school or they stay aboard and go over to Crisfield.

Some people have a car stored in Crisfield so they can go to the doctor, grocery store, Family Dollar, etc, or go to work.  They do their errands and bring the 12:30  or the 4:30 ferry for a 45 minute ride back to the 2 stops on Smith’s Island.  Larry picked up the children from Ewell at 3:00 and takes them over to Taylorton, then comes back to Ewell at 3:45 and picks up the tourists to take them back to Crisfield.

When all done for the day he goes back to the 2 stops on Smith’s Island and leaves the boat in Taylorton (where he has lived his whole life) overnight to start it all over again the next day.    The people on the island have a broken English language.  Colletta and I went into the grocery store in Ewell and had trouble understanding the men sitting around the table drinking soda (pop).  This island is a dry island.  There is no alcohol served or sold on the island.   We talked to a girl that worked at the gift shop and has lived on the island her whole life.  She was excited to hear that we were from Illinois since she is a BIG Bears fan.  She said that she only leaves the island 3 times a year.  The Food Lion in Crisfield sends out grocery orders forms to the island and Larry’s son takes in the orders,  gathers the boxed groceries and brings them back over on his boat.  He only charges $5 a box for the groceries.

We got to the island around 1:50.  We ate lunch at the only sit down restaurant in Ewell, Bayside Inn.  They are known for their crab cakes, stewed tomatoes, and their 9 layer Smith Island cake.  We took our bikes 2 miles to check out Rhode Point, the other “town” on the island.  It was just a bunch of houses and some fishing shacks used for crabbing.    There is a Musuem in Ewell that tells about the people, but we ran out of time and had to get back on the ferry.

When we got back to Crisfield, we rode our bikes 2 miles to the grocery store to pick up a few supplies and beer.  They have 2 different places to get booze. You can only buy liquor at and beer and wine at other places.  No liquor sold at the grocery stores.