It is near the end of crab season in Maryland. We've seen everything from commercial crabbing to personal crabbing. The commercial guys go out early to check their pots, often before they have to go to their second jobs because crabbing doesn't support a family any more. The personal crabbers, with just a few pots or a net, work their favorite locations when they have the time. When we were in the Wye River the guy in this picture came in around sun-up and dragged his net across the grassy bottoms at the side of the creek, scooping up hard crabs and molting "peeler" crabs, the catch that becomes soft shell crabs on the dinner plate. After he would scrap the bottom for a distance, he would raise the net, sort through what he had caught and toss back the crabs that were too small to keep.
We've had wonderful anchorages in Maryland, especially this weekend. Our friends, Rob and Carol Harris, were with us. We went up the Patuxent River to St. Leonard's Creek. The cruising guide described it as "the most beautiful" anchorage on the Patuxent and it didn't disappoint us. The trees on the creek are starting to turn fall colors. Yesterday afternoon as we were enjoying the quiet, sunny, crisp afternoon from the back deck, we saw a bald eagle swoop down to catch a fish, then land in a nearby tree to enjoy his catch. This morning we saw three deer near the dock in the picture.
Fall has definitely come to Maryland. The highs for the next four days won't be out of the 50s. Jim is still wearing shorts, but I admit to being a Florida wimp. It's pants and sweatshirts for me. Next time we go home, I'm taking all of the shorts back to Cleveland and replacing them with jeans and more sweats on the boat. Thank goodness my mother gave us zip-up sweatshirt jackets with Down Time's name on them as Christmas gifts the year the year we got the boat. Otherwise, I'd have frozen to death already.
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