Happy (Very Belated!) Anniversary to Us!

With so much busy-ness in our lives these days, I have not had the time to blog as much as I would have liked. But I'm trying to do better. So, I thought I would share some pics from our trip in late December to the Eastern Shore of Maryland...Tilghman Island, to be exact.

On December 29, Dave and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. For Christmas I told Dave the one thing I really wanted was to go away, sans children, for our anniversary. He said that was fine, so I began looking for a place to visit. I checked out all of our usual haunts...D.C. NYC, the Jersey Shore...but nothing was working for us. I then went on VRBO, which had been a great resource for our FL trip in November, and I started to see some areas in MD that looked interesting. Tilghman Island kept popping up, so I did a Bed and Breakfast search for Tilghman Island and The Chesapeake Wood Duck Inn was on the list.

Dave and I used to love visiting bed and breakfasts before we had children, but they are not too kid-friendly, so it had been quite awhile since we had stayed at one. The Chesapeake Wood Duck Inn had great reviews, and was running a "Winter Escape" special. I sent an e-mail early on Christmas week asking about the weekend right after Christmas, and thankfully, they had availability. In fact, we ended up having the whole place to ourselves! The innkeepers, Jeffery and Kimberly, were wonderful, asking about all of our food preferences for the four course dinner for two that came with the special offer, and sending us detailed directions and such on very short notice.

After spending Christmas day at my parents' house in DE, we left the kids in their care and my sister's care, and we took off for MD on Saturday morning. It wasn't a bad drive at all from DE, and we made really good time. There was a fire burning in the fireplace upon our arrival, and we quickly made ourselves at home with the XM radio and wireless computer connection. Dinner was absolutely incredible, as Jeffery is a gourmet chef, and his recommendation of filet as our main dish was superb. Saturday night we had our dinner, and then we enjoyed two gourmet breakfasts the next two mornings which were out-of-this-world amazing. The innkeepers were very easy to talk to, and very helpful with directions and information on the island and surrounding towns. The Eastern Shore is very busy during the summer, but quite void of tourists in the winter, so we enjoyed the solitude and stark beauty of this unique landscape in winter. I would highly recommend The Chesapeake Wood Duck Inn and a trip to the Eastern Shore and we hope to visit again soon. Enjoy the photos!

a side view of the inn...the 1890 structure was used as a guest house originally, and was refinished by the current owners

a view of the back of the inn and the big yard

LOVE these adirondock chairs...unfortunately, it was a bit chilly to use them!

this is the view from the backyard of the inn...it is the working marina with fishermen coming and going all day long

one of the many fishing boats in the marina

thought this was pretty cool!

another view of the marina and the fishing fleet