A Historical Day filled with wildlife on Maryland's Eastern Shore

After yesterday's stormy weather, we only have one day to explore the Chesapeake Bay side of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. While the western side of this state is more urban, we are loving this more rural eastern side of Maryland. It has room for wildlife refuges, little fishing villages, and some great history. We're going to explore a little of all three today. We're heading toward the end of the road--where Maryland literally drops into the Chesapeake Bay. To get there, we must drive through the Fishing Bay Wildlife Refuge. It wasn't long before we saw some movement in the grass beside the road.  

In the course of the drive this morning, we would spot five different foxes.

We drove to the end of the road, to the boat dock in the little fishing village of Elliot Island. After yesterday's rain, we were treated to a beautiful blue-sky day today!

We spotted a nest on a pole on the other side of the pier. An osprey had just flown back to the nest with a fish.

Those two babies were very excited, as mom pulled off chunks of fish to place in their beaks.

We love to watch family moments like this one. Just like the song lyrics, "We were sitting on the dock of the bay wastin' time."  For 45 minutes we watched the wildlife from the dock.

Meanwhile, Dad is sitting on the rock jetty surveying the water.

It wasn't long before he flew to the nest to deliver another piece of sea food to his hungry family.  The mother continued feeding until the two chicks were full.

We watch as he left with empty talons, not eating any of the catch himself.

After watching ospreys for 45 minutes, we finally pulled ourselves away from the Elliot Island Dock. We are on little-traveled roads today, and we found we were sharing it with a slow traveler. We found this beautifully ornate turtle walking along the other side of the pavement. We'd never seen a big turtle like this one, but a ranger later today looked it up for us. This is a Diamond back terrapin, and they leave the water during this time of the year to lay eggs. We think that this is a female on a mission.

Today's route also takes us along some great history. We downloaded an audio tour on our phone, to listen to descriptions of places we would pass that were important in the life of a famous American--Harriet Tubman. Best known for her work of leading more than 70 slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, Harriet was born into slavery here in Dorchester County in the Eastern shores of Maryland. We stopped at her birthplace, and listened to the audio description including details of her life.

Another stop on our audio tour was the old Bucktown General Store. This is the place where Harriet was hit in the head with a two pound weight that was meant to strike a slave boy that was running. The miss-thrown weight cracked Harriet's skull and caused permanent damage. But it didn't stop her resolve to be free one day.

We stopped in at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center to learn more details of her inspiring life. Because she was forced to work in the marshes and forests surrounding this area, she knew first-hand the best route for slaves to escape. After she escaped in 1849, she would make 13 more trips back here to guide other slaves through these brutal surroundings to freedom.

It was a historically awe-inspiring day of courage hanging out with Harriet Tubman.

In 2016, the U.S. congress voted to put Harriet Tubman's portrait on the twenty dollar bill. If you haven't seen any of these new bills, that's because the government missed their proposed minting date of 2020. The visitor center said that maybe it will happen by 2030?!?

Our other destination today is the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. As we approached the entrance of the driving tour, a red-headed woodpecker greeted us on a post.

That stunning red head is worth two pictures!

We could have taken one of the hikes that start from Wallace Drive, but the hungry bugs in the forest convinced us that it was better to stay out of the woods. Besides, we were seeing plenty of the area's wildlife from the comfort of the pickup. Not as pretty as a diamond-back terrapin, this turtle was thriving in the red mud.

It was a great day to watch osprey nests. It looked like this pair were all alone in this nest near the wetlands.

But then two little heads popped out of the nest, requesting to be fed again.

One of the adult ospreys just happed to have some leftover fish for a snack.

While out of the pickup to watch the osprey nest, we were also watching the swallowtail butterflies on the white flowers.

Blackwater Refuge is filled with marshes and wetlands. Now we can envision how hard it was for runaway slaves to find a way through the water and forest--with biting bugs in the summer and freezing water in the winter. But it was also a hard place to be tracked, and an uncomfortable place for the slave owners to follow them. It provided a great place for the underground railroad to help slaves escape.

After our drive through the refuge, it was time for a kayak trip. We drove to Shorters Wharf and inflated our sea eagle kayak. When we got on the water we found that we were rowing against the wind and the tidal current. Is this a good idea?

There are several kayak trails mapped out within the refuge. We are on the 7.6-mile orange trail signed with an orange "O" to keep us on the right path.

After we paddled for a while, the water became calm and the wind died down. We were planning for that wind and tide to float us back to the pickup when we turned our boat in the opposite direction. It looks like we'll be paddling both ways.

We had some bird sightings while we paddled through the refuge. We saw several eagles, and this one even let us get close enough to take a picture.

After that big eagle, we next sighted this tiny bird. Almost as small as a humming bird, he could balance on top of a thin blade of cordgrass.

We heard him before we saw him. He would open his mouth and put his whole little body into his song.

After three miles on the water, we saw our first loblolly pines of this trip. Until now, we have been surrounded by cordgrass, with no trees in sight.

At four miles, we came to the anti-climactic END of this route. We have arrived at Loblolly Landing, so we knew it was time to turn around.

When we turned the kayak around to head back towards our launch point, the water was completely smooth. It was reflecting the pretty clouds to make a tranquil picture. We have wandered into another of God's wonders.

While it makes for great water-mirror pictures, conditions like this mean two things to kayakers. First, the wind that we had to row against earlier has died down. That means that it won't be blowing us back like we had hoped. But more importantly, the tidal inflow that we were also rowing against at the beginning of this ride was caused by the incoming high tide. Now we are at something below high tide, when the water is draining out of the marsh.

We took this picture when we first started on this kayak trip. Notice where the marsh grass meets the water.

Now, we could see a good amount of mud at the base of that grass. We noticed that our boat was handling differently. That was because the bottom of our boat was occasionally touching the muddy swamp  bottom. The water was draining out of the wetlands as we were getting closer to low tide. We weren't sure how we were going to get back to the pickup if it got so low that we couldn't paddle any more.

The thought of waiting in the kayak for another six hours until high tide returned wasn't all that appealing. So we we rowed faster and faster towards the pickup. This was turning into a tough kayaking trip. We started this trip rowing against the wind and the tidal current coming in, and now we are rowing against the tidal current going out with the stress of not wanting to get stuck in the mud. We were glad to see the kayak trail signs indicate that we were now at the intersection of the purple and orange trails. That meant we were getting close to the pickup.

It was a good reminder that we should have checked the tide schedules when we were this close to the bay. While we asked at the visitor center, that ranger wasn't familiar with kayaking in the refuge. If we had scheduled this float at a different time of day we could have floated out with low tide, and floated back to the pickup as high tide came in. Oops!

We spent more time inside Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge than we had thought, so it was later than we had planned when we arrived at the lighthouse in Camden, Maryland.

The sun was setting over Choptank River as we left the Camden Marina. We had planned to visit some other places in this neat little town, but we ran out of time. We had a great time, enjoying a historical day filled with wildlife on Maryland's Eastern Shore.