Juno 423: An Unusually High Tide and a 20 mile Bike Ride from St. Michael’s to Michael’s in Easton, MD

Upon arriving in St. Michaels Thursday morning Oct. 28th by dinghy from Long Haul Creek, we noticed many docks and even a waterfront restaurant’s seating area were under water. In fact we had to take our shoes off and wade to shore from the dinghy dock because the water was so high. We had heard reports of tides four feet above normal caused by high winds pushing water up the Chesapeake but hadn’t seen such direct evidence. Four feet of extra tide is a lot when normally tides are only 2-3 feet between high and low. In fact it is noticeable how vulnerable the entire Chesapeake Bay Area is to sea level rise and yet we found it quite surprising that the new construction we observed didn’t take sea level rise into account. One local recounted how this was the highest since Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

Today’s goal was to get from St. Michaels to Michael’s craft store in Easton, MD in order to purchase some knitting needles. As we had also wanted to bike while visiting the Eastern shore, we killed two birds with one stone and rented bikes to ride the 10 miles to Easton and then back. Our ride took us along a major road, a little unnerving as the speed limit was 50 mph, but it had a wide shoulder and was touted as part of one of the premier bike rides in the USA. Suffice to say, we got the knitting needles, some fishing lures. Harry tried for a Covid vaccine and flu shot but no appointments were available, perhaps due to the recent approval for younger kids.

On the way back from Easton, we stopped for lunch at an engineering college and ate our picnic lunch on a bench before a memorial to the merchant marines. Before returning the rental bikes we found some local back roads near St. Michaels that were quite pretty and more what we expected of an eastern shore bike ride. All that riding worked up a thirst which Harry quenched with a beer at the St. Michael’s Eastern Shore Brewing brewery (perhaps lucky for us the micro distillery tasting room was closed for remodeling). Sarah chose to use the time to do a little browsing in the shops and heard the local pharmacy had Covid and flu shots. Again there were no appointments for Covid vaccines but Harry did mange to get his flu vaccine. We were back on Juno by 4 pm so as to move her to a more protected anchorage for the big winds out of the east that are forecast to arrive on Friday. We ended up back in the Wye River for the night but in the North branch and anchored in Drum Point along with three other boats who also chose this spot to seek shelter from the approaching storm.