There is a Castle on a Hill, and oysters Down by the Bay

{PART III of my vacation with Ammon to Virginia}

On Saturday morning (Feb. 28), we leisurely slept in since we didn't have to catch a train early like the day before! Lisa cooked us grits for breakfast, because I'd mentioned at the restaurant the previous day that I thought about ordering some since I'd never had any before. They were good; Ammon tried them for the first time as well and I liked them, too. 

Our plans for the day were to head to Maryland to see Chesapeake Bay. Mack drove us around all day in his awesome Toyota Tundra truck.  He even surprised me with a short trip to see the DC temple that's in Maryland (it's near a quaint town that's actually named "Chevy Chase")! I had no idea of his plans to surprise me, so when he got off the freeway exit and said we were stopping at a glorified outhouse, I was so delighted to spot this through the trees!

It was breathtaking! The temple is on a hill, surrounded by trees, and it looks as if it's a castle with the spires rising to the heavens above. It was such a tall temple, and I loved the golden spires! I never remember being so wowed by the sight of a temple before! The pictures don't do justice to truly how magnificent it is or to my experience seeing it!

After our brief visit to the temple grounds, we continued east towards the bay. After about another hour of driving, we reached the Sandy Point State Park that lines the Chesapeake Bay, right before the 4.3 mile-long Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

The bay was frozen and full of ice chunks. Lisa said in the past 20 years that she's lived in Virginia, she's never seen the bay frozen before! It was quite the sight! Ammon & I have now seen inlets of both oceans bordering both sides of the U.S. within the past year: last April we saw the Puget Sound in Seattle and now the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland! 

The boys are wearing matching clothes!
(completely by mistake, of course)

We walked along the sandy/snowy beach collecting shells and beach glass, which is always an enjoyable activity for me, even despite the cold!

I'm holding the collection of oyster shells I found

The boys playing on the beach that borders the Bay Bridge. 

What a lovely sand volcano.
Quinn can't take a photo without making a silly face!

I noticed this tugboat pulling a freight ship
through the frozen water as we were leaving.

We were so starving after walking along the beach, as it was well past lunch time! The exact same thing had happened to just the day before, too. We left the beach at about 2:00, and drove to one of Mack's favorite restaurants in Annapolis called Jimmy Cantler's Riverside Inn. It's a quaint seafood restaurant with water frontage; there's parking in back for cars, and docks in front for boats to park! It's popular for its fresh seafood and especially the steamed crabs served in the hard shell that you have to break open. Several tables of people around us were breaking open their crabs and eating them, and it was very interesting to watch. I've never eaten crabs like that before, and I would have no idea how to do it, plus it looked like a lot of work, and I was way too hungry to be working in order to eat my food or I may have ordered some! Ammon and I have never eaten oysters before, and since the Fisher family loves them, they ordered a tray of them, and we all tried one. Ammon really liked it! It was a little too slimy for me, though.

Ammon ordered the fried Rockfish, and I got the Stuffed Shrimp with Crab Imperial. We also ordered some hush puppies (deep-fried cornmeal) as an appetizer, because I'd never had them before either. And we ordered dessert, too (remember, I said we were starving!!!); I had the key lime cheesecake. The fresh seafood was such a treat and everything we ate there was so delicious!

Ammon was happily watching a b-ball game on the TV above us

After our late lunch, we drove back to Manassas, and got back to the Fisher's home after dark. We watched a movie all together in the basement called "Breaking Away". It's a 1979 Acadamy Award- winning film about some boys who graduate high school, and they grew up with fathers who worked in a nearby quarry. The boys go and swim frequently in an abandoned water-filled quarry, and they have adventures with students at a local college. It was an interesting film that I'd never even heard of before, but I liked it. Mack recommended we watch it after we'd spent the previous day in D.C., during which I asked what the white stone was that all the buildings there were made out of. I was curious if there was a local quarry where all the stone was cut and used to construct the buildings in our nation's capital. I googled it after I came home and found that they mostly used sandstone that came from quarries in Maryland and Virginia.

I was happy with our 2nd full day of vacation with the Fisher's. I loved spending time with family on the beach collecting oyster shells, seeing the glorious temple and the expansive bay, trying new seafood, and driving around Virginia and Maryland looking at all the views!