vacation and bike trip reconnaissance

 The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I went on a bike club trip to Martha's Vineyard last year (from which I got three posts on the other blog). We both loved it, and TEW had the idea to consider the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a similar trip. She did the trip research; I found some rides on RideWithGPS, and off we went this past week.

We stayed in Oxford, Maryland, in Talbot County. It's a sleepy, but beautiful place.

That's the ferry we took to get there. You don't have to go by ferry, and if you do, it's only $18 for a car, driver, and one passenger.

The view from our table at one of the places we went to dinner.

We went to Annapolis one day.

... and did the tour, and got a picture for our anniversary (which was last month, but we often move the anniversary picture for when we're in a photogenic location)

And, of course, we took a few rides. Here's TEW on the ferry when we included that in a ride one day:

We loved this trip. We had a great time with each other, on a relaxing, fun vacation.

But we're not sure it will work for a bike club trip. There aren't many towns in the county we went to, and the towns that are there, are connected by single roads with a 50mph speed limit. There are huge shoulders, but TEW was unhappy with those roads. Further, while there are some loops that can be made without these roads, the loops tend to be short; we had to add miles to get up to 20. Instead, most of the roads are dead-ends that go off the main roads... so you can extend the routes, but you do a lot of out-and-back.

If we do go back, we'll probably stay in a different town. We took a trip to St Michaels, and there was a LOT more going on there. In Oxford, where we stayed, little was open this early in the season, and NOTHING was open Monday to Wednesday, except for a tiny general store for which we had high hopes, which were not realized. (I had visions of all the residents being pod people, who had to enter their pods to rejuvenate for three days, after acting like normals for four days in the week. I watched too much terrible science fiction in an earlier life.)

We took this ride on Wednesday (when TEW decided she didn't like the traffic), and this one on Thursday (better traffic, but only 18 miles).

We haven't completely given up. We may try a different location, and we'll report back when we know more.