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We slept in this morning, and had a peaceful night.  We had a full breakfast, and I took my second cup of coffee up to the cockpit while Bill was down below.  What a peaceful morning with the ospreys soaring and calling overhead.  They had a nest in a tree across from our anchorage, and we had been watching them take turns bringing food to the baby.  Everything was calm and quiet and I reflected upon all the wonderful experiences of this voyage when my thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sound of a lawnmower.  Always, reality intrudes! 

We didn’t leave the cove until 10:30, but we didn’t have too far to go.  The winds were light from the south, so we didn’t bother to put up sails as we made our way back into the Patuxent. We passed under the sky-high Governor John Thomas Bridge that leads to Solomons Island.  There was some kind of traffic jam and there were people walking across the bridge, but we couldn’t figure out just what was going on, maybe a road race/charity walk.  I can still remember coming across that bridge in a car with its dizzying height that gave me vertigo.  We passed close to the Blackstone Marina creek where Bill’s cousin Tallmadge and her husband Mr. Claude kept their Catalina 30.  It was they who introduced us to sailing on the Chesapeake, and we will be forever grateful for the good times we had with them and for imparting a love of sailing to us and our children.  We headed for St. Leonard’s Creek, where we had gone before with Talmage and Claude.  We may even have anchored in the same location where we had stopped in the 1980’s for a trip to Vera’s Restaurant.  Since we arrived early, we had time to relax, read our books, and I even put on my bathing suit!  Hooray for warmer weather.  After a laid back afternoon, we put the dinghy down and headed back down memory lane to the Tiki-themed Vera’s.  We had to scale the dock wall to exit the dinghy, but we climbed the hill we remembered from times past and had a great meal – where we drank a toast to Tally and Claude.  I highly recommend the Crab Melt – huge amounts of wonderful Crab Imperial.  Also, the Raspberry Vodka Lemonade was a treat.  We were sad to learn that Vera, the flamboyant founder of the restaurant had died 3 years ago.  The band was unloading their gear as we exited, and we really wanted to stay and enjoy the music and dancing, but we both acknowledged that it would be a very precarious dinghy ride back to Cool Breeze if we stayed.

Now we are buttoned up for the night, and since we’re lacking enough cell phone coverage to get on the internet, I’ll sign off.  Tomorrow, we’re headed back to Solomon’s, as the weather report calls for thunderstorms in the afternoon and we want to be tied up to a marina.  This time we’ll stay at Spring Cove Marina, home of the Naughty Gull Restaurant, which we also remember from our previous Chesapeake experience as having the best crab cake sandwiches ever!