Mark and I spent the three-day weekend on Maryland's Eastern Shore, in the small town of St. Michael's. We were staying in a cottage at an inn where Robert E. Lee slept (I'm sure George Washington would have, if he'd traveled that way.) What a wonderful escape (despite gale force winds for the better part of the weekend!)...

On Saturday, we spent most of the grey-and-gloomy-but-not-raining day ducking into the little shops that line the main street of town. It was interesting to see snapshots of summer life during this off season - one closed-for-winter shop had a sign in its window proclaiming that it did NOT (the sign was quite vehement) agree with the horrific parking rules and regulations passed by the town council. We never did find out what was so horrific.

Saturday night, we went to the one bar in town, to watch the Redskins football game. I felt like an anthropologist on assignment - strange to say, but I had never just hung out in a bar, drinking beer, and watching a game on the tube. (The game did not go well for the 'Skins, but the fried calamari and Stella helped us to survive...)

On Sunday, we took a walking tour of town, following a printed guide that pointed out architectural details, historic points of interest, etc. We spent the better part of the afternoon at the Chesapeake Marine Museum (which I thought would be pretty boring - a quick walk-through, even for this museum fanatic - but which turned out to be quite interesting.) I loved walking through the lighthouse. They had the lighthouse keeper's diet on the wall (food was delivered by contract) - the man ate 12 pounds of potatoes a week! Mark and I survived near-disaster when the restaurant where we'd planned on eating dinner proved to be so popular that we could not get in without a reservation - and every other restaurant was closed in the off season. (We drove back toward a bigger town and feasted on pizza.)

On Monday, I woke up with a magnificent idea for a Red Dress novel. I scribbled down the inspiration (no time to do more - I have a novel to write before I can even think about this new idea!) and then we drove down to Tilghman's Island. We'd been told that it was a quieter, less-developed St. Michael's. It was, um, even quieter than that - it was *tiny*, with a handful of fishing boats and not much else. We were actually pleased that we'd decided to stay in St. M's instead of on the Island.

And then, sigh, we drove home (although I did make some killer finds at the LL Bean outlet on the way.)

Mindy (who can now reliably recognize a skipjack, thank you very much!)