Avoid Vacation-Hangover...

...Visit Smith Island

Holidays to Smith Island are easy. You won't go back to work more exhausted than when you left. There's plenty of light-action leisure for everyone:

Stroll the harbor and watch the watermen work. Get to know our island folk. You'll recognize islanders born and raised here. There's a unique dialect exclusive to Smith Island. A remnant of Elizabethan-Cornwall English, with its own unique grammar pattern, spoken by early English settlers.
Tour by bicycle the communities of Ewell and Rhodes Point (formerly called Rogue's Point -- because Blackbeard the pirate is said to have harbored there!). Bring your own bike or use ours, as long as they're available. Tylerton, the smallest of the villages has no roads leading to it. It's accessible by water.
Kayak the local channels and explore nature on an uninhabited island. Ewell Tide B&B has two 2-seat kayaks for our guests' use. Bring your wading-shoes.
Get creative: write, paint, draw, photograph. You have the run of the whole island.
Star gaze. Far from any city lights you'll have one of the best possible views of the night sky anywhere on the East Coast. Telescope and starchart available for our guests. It's also one rare place in America you can watch the sun both rise and set on a water horizon.
Tour the private museums and exhibitions. Visit the new Smith Island Center Heritage Museum and get a true sense of the Chesapeake region's rich history and heritage.
Pick out something from the various gift shoppes. Not a bunch of tacky tourist junk here. Quality product, hand-crafted locally. Retired woodworkers on the island create, for example, scale replicas of light houses, skipjacks, and other maritime items. Various sizes available, up to yard ornament size. You'll see examples on display in several cottage gardens.
Tour the island by bike (bring your own or use one of ours), rent a golf cart, ride the tour bus. Or bring your Segway.
Enjoy a soda pop or coffee from the 1920's-era Driftwood General Store. A kind of all-in-one store you don't see anymore.
Pomegranate, fig trees, and English Holly bushes grow wild here. The island has one of the largest known English Holly bushes, over 20' tall. An inspiration for the B&B's name of Ewell Tide.
Children have a playground at the elementary school just up the lane.

For the fullest Chesapeake Bay experience contact Captain Terry Laird, Sr. & Son. Phone: 410-425-5931 or 410-422-0620. Available for private-party excursions, whether for fishing, sight-seeing, or transportation between shores or to Tangier and Smith Islands.
Let us show you how to throw over a crabbing line from a dock and catch a Blue crab from the shallows.
Try the medley of seafood served at the two local restaurants.
Relax in the B&B's sunroom or out in the yard under the island's oldest tree, a maple growing here when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
Even if you're not into birding, be sure to watch for American Bald Eagles. The 4000 acre Martin Wildlife Refuge is home to one of the largest Bald Eagle populations in the country. When you enter or leave the harbor look for a bald eagle perched in a tree or soaring overhead.
Look for the wild goats across the channel on the otherwise uninhabited "Goat Island." Curious creatures, they'll often come near the water's edge as boats pass.
Smith Island is a textbook study of indigenous Bay insects. A field day for entomologists.

General Island Info

Each of the island's three villages, Ewell, Rhodes Point, & Tylerton (Ewell is the metropolis) has its own working harbor where most working age islanders earn their livings.

About 450 people call Smith Island home, living here year round. In the the summer that number swells as city-escapees are discovering the island's unique qualities of old-time community and security. Over 25,000 people visit Smith Island each season.

Don't miss your opportunity to fully experience America's historic Chesapeake Bay. Call now for your overnight reservation.
410-425-2141
888-699-2141
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