Mahvalous Delmarva

Delmarva Real Estate, Delmarva Fishing Charters, Delmarva Auto Sales, Delmarva, Delmarva, Delmarva...hmmm....~lightbulb moment~!!!
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia...Delmarva!  I like the sound of it!

Delmarva is a 'portmanteau' formed from the names of the states that occupy it: Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.  The earliest uses of the term appear to have been commercial—for example, the Delmarva Heat, Light, and Refrigerating Corp. of Chincoteague, Virginia, was in existence by 1913—but general use of the term did not occur until the 1920s.

As we approach the Delmarva Peninsula from the south, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is an amazing ride!  Crossing the vast Chesapeake Bay, busy with tankers and yachts and fishing boats, the 20-mile long bridge/tunnel complex is a phenomenal structure.  This is the second loooong bridge the Silver Chalet has experienced, the first being the Seven-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys.  This is truly an engineering marvel, said to be one of the top seven engineering wonders in the world!

Delaware, the First State...lovely, rolling hills with mile after mile of lush, green farmland.  Our first stop is in Smyrna at the Parkview RV place where our new TV is just waiting to be installed!  After a night at the Best Western and the best meal so far on the trip at the Celtic Pub, crab bisque, steak and baked sweet potato, all prepared to perfection...we are on our way to Killens Pond State Park, just south of Dover.

We hike the 1.6 mile trail around the pond, through pines and sycamores and maples with a myriad of bird songs that we don't recognize...where are Frank and Linda when you really need them!  I am sure our birding expert friends could identify these songbirds for us!  Canoes, kayaks and paddleboats dot the waterscape.  Back in the 1700's, a group of Dutch settlers was massacred in the area, so they named it Killens Pond.  I'm not going to think about that.  :(

It's the 4th of July and we are in the First State!  That is really something!  Visiting Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island is the way we decide to spend it!  The ferry ride from Delaware City to Fort Delaware is a short one, with Fort Mott, New Jersey, on the opposite shore, also one of its destinations.

A fortress was built on Pea Patch Island by the United States Army in 1815, near the end of the War of 1812, to protect the harbors of Wilmington, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The fort was burned and rebuilt in the years just before the Civil War, and soon after the start of the war the fort was converted to a Prisoner of War camp.

Fort Delaware State Park is a center of historic Civil War interpretation and getting acquainted with some of the award winning reenactors is so interesting!  Reverend Handy, a Presbyterian minister and Southern sympathizer, is incarcerated here.  We are surprised to learn that 1,000 US citizens were imprisoned each month during the Civil War due to the suspension of Habeus Corpus by President Lincoln, resulting in the loss of due process, martial law in effect.

Hmmm, the aroma of hamburgers grilling over charcoal gets my attention, so I head off in that direction!  While I am busy getting lunch ordered, Mike runs into Reverend Handy again, chats him up, and the next thing I know, off he goes with him, with a wave and a Cheshire cat grin!  Reverend Handy takes Mike on a personal tour of a portion of the fort that is not open to visitors, while I glumly sit waiting for the hamburgers to be prepared!

Captain Johnson takes us on an hour-long Interpretive Tour of the fort stopping by the Dining Room with flags of 34 stars, (the beginning of the war) and 35 stars, (West Virginia joined in 1863),

the Kitchen (with running water from one of the many cisterns which make the fort siege worthy for up to 90 days),

the Laundry, the Infirmary and the Officers' Quarters.

Most domestic help made $12-$14 a month, while officers made from $65-$70 a month.  The realism portrayed here is outstanding!

Demonstration of the firing of an 8-inch Columbiad gun brings a sizeable crowd to the northwest corner of the fort.

A group of reenactors pays special attention to Captain George Ahl and his band of former confederate soldiers who formed the 1st Delaware Heavy Artillery.

Captain Ahl obtained permission from the War Department to form a battery of Confederate prisoners who could prove they had been conscripted into the Confederate Army. Upon taking an oath of allegiance they were permitted to join the Federal Army.

 Volunteers have recreated Ahl's Battery at Fort Delaware State Park and have assumed the identities of members of the battery. The reenactors give demonstrations of what life was like for the members of the 1st Delaware Heavy Artillery.

Most of the Confederates captured at Gettysburg, from General James J. Archer down to the last private, were imprisoned at Fort Delaware after the battle. There were 12,500 prisoners on the island in August 1863.  Among the political prisoners housed here were Burton H. Harrison, private secretary to Jefferson Davis, and Governor E R. Lubbock of Texas, who was the last prisoner at the fort.

About 2,700 prisoners died while incarcerated at Fort Delaware. Of these, over 2,400 are buried in a national cemetery at Finn's Point, NJ, just across the Delaware River and adjoining Fort Mott.  By 1863, “Fort Delaware Death Pen”, as it was called by Confederate inmates, had a reputation as the worst of the Union prisons with the highest mortality rate for prisoners and a reputation for cruelty.

PFC, Lionel Beaureguard, from Alabama, has been a prisoner here for seven months, ever since he was captured after the Battle of Gettysburg.  He is anxious to get back to the fighting, but for now, is content to whittle a little teapot from a peach pit.  He cooks his own meals, including bread, and is happy to put his hat on to pose for a photograph, in character, totally, complete with stutter and slow drawl.                

Kathy's Crab House in Delaware City is busy even at 4:30 in the afternoon as we decide to have an early dinner on the way home.  Steamed blue crabs and shrimp with lots of Old Bay, the signature seasoning of the area!  Our waitress is kind enough to give us a tutorial on the proper way of popping off the shell, removing the lungs, etc., to get to the good stuff!  She tells us that overusing the mallet is a dead give-away!!!!

Annapolis is an hour away to the west, so we are going there to meet a dear high school friend for dinner.  Construction, and a four-lane road narrowing to two lanes turns the trip into a two-hour one, then finding a parking place in Historic Annapolis adds another hour.  We finally find a parking garage with a clearance of 8'2"!  Yippee, that's a good 6" to spare, only to drive up to the ticket gate and discover that the INTERIOR clearance is less that 7'....huh?  Okay, we're driving, we're searching, we're going in circles!  Finally, I suggest that we get out of the historic, congested area and find a side street with no parking permits required and then we take a nice stroll.  We find Severn Street, just over the harbor bridge and park...no tow away signs in sight!

Annapolis is a lovely harbor city, the capital of Maryland.

It is quaint with brick streets, colonial buildings overlooking marinas with sailboats and yachts crowded in...right downtown.

It was in this very harbor where Alex Haley's Kunta Kinte arrived on a slave ship in 1767, immortalized in his best seller, 'Roots'.

Built on the capitol and church circle city-plan, used by Nichols in London and Williamsburg as well, we spend the afternoon walking around the nearby US Naval Academy and the State House.  Our trolley tour gets cancelled because of a broken a/c, disappointing, but at least we are able to join the last State House tour of the day.

The Maryland State House is perched on the highest hill in the city, overlooking the harbor.   Built in the late 1700's , it is a wooden-domed, building, the oldest state capitol in continuous use, currently undergoing a discovery restoration process, where the rooms are being taken back down to the brick in order to 'discover' the original building materials and paint colors.  Completion is expected by 2014.

It served as the U.S. capitol from November 1783 - August 1784 when Continental Congress met in the Old Senate Chamber.  It was in this very room that General George Washington resigned his commission to the the Continental Army in 1783.

We are amazed at how small the legislative chambers are...the senate having only 47 members.  It is a lovely building where the Treaty of Paris was signed!

The state flag of Maryland features the heraldic banner of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. It is the only state flag in the United States based on English heraldry. The black and gold design on the flag is the coat of arms of the Calvert family, granted to George Calvert as a reward for his storming of a fortification during a battle (the vertical bars represent the bars of the palisade). The red and white design is the coat of arms of the Crossland family, the family of Calvert's mother, and features a cross bottony. Since George Calvert's mother was an heiress, he was entitled to use both coats of arms in his banner.

The red and white Crossland coat of arms became popular during the American Civil War, when Maryland remained with the Union despite many citizens' support for the Confederacy. Those Marylanders who supported the Confederacy, many who fought in the Army of Northern Virginia, were resistant to use a banner associated with a state which remained with the Union. They adopted the Crossland banner, which was red and white, "secession colors". After the war, Marylanders who had fought on both sides of the conflict came back home to their state in need of reconciliation. The present design, includes both of the coats of arms used by George Calvert. It is a spectacularly beautiful flag!

The Hard Bean Coffee House and Booksellers is our meeting place with the Levisees.  And in walks Carmen, as beautiful and bubbly as I remember her from high school. Her great husband, Jerry, is not far behind. It is always a treat to get together with friends when you are travelling so far from home! Hardly seems possible that high school was 45 years ago! They have lived here for thirty years. Carmen worked for the Speaker of the House for many years, so they give us a wonderful driving tour as we make our way to our restaurant overlooking the harbor. They love to travel as much as we do, especially to France, so we spend most of the evening discussing our next adventures, best practices, and some funny stories. The evening ends all too soon, and we make the drive home in about an hour....no traffic!

Rehoboth Beach is a short drive for our last day, so we decide to go there for lunch.  The weather doesn't cooperate, but we still manage to walk the mile-long boardwalk with its cotton candy, saltwater taffy, penny arcades,  tattoo parlors and pizza joints.

The beach is closed due to lightning from the recent storm, but is due to open soon.  Anxious tourists cluster around the life guards, suntan lotion, boogie boards, and beach balls in hand.  Empty beach chairs and lonely umbrellas wait for them, abandoned quickly when the storm hit just moments before we arrived.

The beach grasses are spectacular and the wide beaches are inviting.  It is easy to see why this is such a popular beach town for folks from New Jersey and New York.

Delaware, the First State!