Town guide · 30 minutes from the cottages
Solomons Island,
Maryland.
Solomons Island sits at the southern tip of Calvert County, Maryland, thirty minutes down the shore from our cottages at Plum Point, where the Patuxent River opens into the Chesapeake. Onto one walkable point of land it packs a museum with a 35-foot megalodon and live otters, a waterfront boardwalk, a famous tiki bar, and the densest run of good restaurants in the county.
Drum Point Lighthouse and the buyboat Wm. B. Tennison, both part of the Calvert Marine Museum.
The anchor
Meet megalodon for real.
The Calvert Marine Museum is the reason Solomons is worth the drive, and visitors keep making the same discovery: it is far bigger than it looks from the parking lot. The fossil hall hangs a 35-foot skeletal reconstruction of megalodon overhead, surrounded by Miocene fossils pulled from the same Calvert Cliffs that begin near our beach. If the story of Plum Point hooked you, this is where you meet the giant itself, teeth and all, and where staff paleontologists identify the mystery fossils people carry in from local beaches.
It is also, unexpectedly, a small zoo. River otters play on both sides of a glass wall, rays glide through the aquariums, and the Discovery Room gives little kids touch tanks, dress-up gear, and a kid-sized lighthouse to climb. Out back stands the real one: the 1883 Drum Point Lighthouse, one of the Chesapeake's last surviving screwpile lights, restored to the way its keepers lived and open for guided climbs.
From spring through fall, the museum's century-old buyboat, the Wm. B. Tennison, runs hour-long harbor cruises in the afternoon. Plan on about two hours inside, more if the otters are showing off; admission is modest and kids under five are free.
Find your own teeth first
The fossil hall, illustrated: megalodon at full length, jaws first.
The boardwalk
Golden hour on the Riverwalk.
The Solomons Riverwalk runs close to a mile along the harbor, past marinas, restaurant decks, and a white gazebo at the water's edge. The sun sets across the Patuxent here, and the nightly show is free. So is the parking; on summer weekends, come by mid-morning, park once, and walk everywhere.
The Riverwalk is also the town's stage. Fireworks go up over the harbor around the Fourth of July, summer concert nights bring genuine touring headliners to the museum's waterfront pavilion, and in December the Solomons Christmas Walk fills the harbor with a lighted-boat parade.
The gazebo at dusk, illustrated: ice cream first, sunset second.
Look up
The sky has an air force.
Directly across the mouth of the Patuxent sits Naval Air Station Patuxent River, the Navy's flight-test capital and home of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. The base logs more than 200,000 flight operations a year, which is why it is completely normal to be halfway through a crab cake when a test jet draws a white line across the sky.
Every few years the base throws open its gates for a full air show, Blue Angels and all, and the whole region shows up. The rest of the time, the free version is dinner on the Solomons waterfront with one eye on the water and one on the sky.
A routine sight over the river mouth: the Navy, rehearsing.
Dinner
The county's best table is a boardwalk.
Ask anyone in Calvert County where to eat and you keep getting pointed at the same quarter mile of Solomons waterfront: crab dip on a deck over the marina, jumbo lump crab cakes with river views, a chef-driven bistro that has anchored the island since the 1990s, and a brewery pouring its own beer next to a scratch kitchen.
And then there is the Tiki Bar, a Solomons institution since 1980, whose spring opening weekend draws crowds from three counties for its orange crushes. We keep the whole list, from the crab decks eleven minutes from your porch to the Solomons date-night spots, in one guide.
Where to eat, the full guide
The megalodon
A full skeletal reconstruction of the giant Miocene shark, suspended in the museum's fossil hall.
Drum Point Lighthouse
A surviving Chesapeake screwpile light on the museum grounds, and yes, you can climb it.
The Riverwalk
Harborside boardwalk with a sunset-facing gazebo, free parking, and everything in walking range.
Flight ops a year
Navy test flights out of Patuxent River, directly across the water. Jets overhead are part of the scenery.
The day, planned
A Solomons day that works.
Thirty easy minutes down the shore from the cottages, tested on real kids and real appetites. Swap any stop for a longer nap at the gazebo.
Museum, otters first.
Beat the crowds to the Discovery Room, then give the fossil hall and the megalodon the time they deserve. Budget about two hours.
Lunch on the water.
Pick a deck over the marina and order the crab dip. Our eating guide has the shortlist.
Cruise or climb.
In season, catch the afternoon harbor cruise on the Wm. B. Tennison; otherwise take the guided climb up Drum Point Lighthouse.
Fairy houses at Annmarie.
A few minutes up the road, the wooded Annmarie Sculpture Garden hides a trail of handmade fairy and gnome homes among the art. September brings its big Artsfest weekend; winter evenings, a walk-through light show.
Ice cream at the gazebo.
The Riverwalk faces the open river, so the golden hour lands right on the water. This is the photo you came for.
Dinner, then look up.
Crab cakes on the waterfront, an orange crush at the Tiki Bar if it is that kind of evening, and on summer concert nights, a headline act drifting over from the museum's pavilion.
Thirty minutes from
the megalodon.
Sleep at Plum Point Cottages, up the shore in Huntingtown: pet-friendly, free kayaks, from $198 a night.
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