Things to do on the Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, its shoreline shared between Maryland and Virginia, and it is best treated as a coast and a way of life rather than a single destination.

From Washington, reaching the Bay's marinas and fishing villages generally means a drive of well over an hour once you're past the Beltway traffic, longer if you're headed further down the Eastern Shore.

Beyond Annapolis and Baltimore's Inner Harbor, both covered on their own pages, the shore itself is about crab houses with paper-covered tables, working watermen's docks, sailboat marinas, and short passenger ferries between towns. Maryland's 6% sales tax is fixed statewide, but it is added at the till, not folded into the menu price at any of the seafood shacks along the water.