Eastern Shore travelblog: Ryan Minor's tourism tips

Our final day in Maryland changed because of an old friend.

Ryan Minor is an Oklahoma high school legend. Is that too strong a word? I don’t think so. At tiny Hammon High School in far western Oklahoma, Minor and his twin brother, Damon, were basketball and baseball stars. Both went to OU, both played on the Sooners’ 1994 College World Series title team and both made the major leagues.

Ryan Minor also played basketball. Two years for Billy Tubbs, two years for Kelvin Sampson. Twenty-one seasons after Minor’s final game, he remains OU’s No. 7 all-time scorer, with 1,946 points.

In 1997, Minor entered his second season of minor league baseball with the Orioles organization. He was assigned to the Delmarva Shorebirds of the Class A South Atlantic League. Minor hit .307 with 24 home runs. And found his future wife, Shannon, who lived in Salisbury, Maryland.

Minor has lived off-seasons in Salisbury ever since and has been blessed that for nine seasons he’s been able to live in Salisbury in the in-season. Minor joined the Orioles organization as a coach in 2008. He spent two years as a coach with the Shorebirds, became their manager in 2010 and has stayed in that role except for one year, 2013, as the manager of the Frederick Keys, Baltimore’s other Class-A team.

On the way out of town from Eastern Shore trip Saturday, we went by the ballpark, and Ryan met us for a short visit. He’s still big (6-foot-7), friendly and serious. No change since Hammon on that front.

Ryan’s wife has been a school teacher in Salisbury for 20 years now. They have two daughters, including a special-needs daughter. The Minor twins’ father, Dale, died in 2013. I wrote about Dale Minor in a column you can read here.

Nancy Minor still works for Edmond Public Schools but will retire soon. Damon Minor, working for the Giants, is moving his family from Kansas to Arizona.

Ryan doesn’t figure to change his life much. Baseball is all he’s known as an adult. Baseball and living in Salisbury.

Minor said he still keeps up with the Sooners – Lon Kruger has been great, keeping alums connected. Minor said he doesn’t know much about Skip Johnson, OU’s new baseball coach, but likes what he hears.

Minor, of course, will forever be connected with the Orioles – he’s the man who replaced Cal Ripken Jr. at third base when Junior’s streak of 2,632 consecutive games played ended in 1998. Now Minor has worked for the Orioles for 10 years. And even on an off night, during the Sally League’s all-star break, Minor took in an Oriole game two hours away in Baltimore, because his daughter, who is non-verbal, loves the sights and sounds of Camden Yards.

We chatted with Ryan about 15 minutes, then were off. But before leaving, we asked him about the Eastern Shore. Told him where we had gone and if we had missed anything. He didn’t have must-see suggestions but mentioned the villages of Oxford and St. Michael’s as possible stops. We thanked him and would have thanked him more if we had known.

CHARMING VILLAGES

The western side of Maryland’s Eastern Shore doesn’t have much in the way of beaches. The bayside is mostly inlets, with lots of commercial fishing. Around Easton, about 30 miles south of the Bay Bridge, is Highway 322, which is known as the Scenic Byway.

We were headed to Oxford, to check out Minor’s recommendation, but a couple of miles before the turnoff, the Scenic Byway presented itself. So I took that road. Drove probably 10 miles and saw plenty of Byway, not so much Scenic in the way of new, so when I saw another option for Oxford, I took it.

And a few minutes later, we were in Oxford. Oxford is a town of about 600 people on the waterfront. It’s one of the oldest towns in Maryland. It was founded in 1667 and became a seaport.

During the American Revolution, many Oxford residents were prominent. Robert Morris Sr. and Jr. were financiers; the latter helped fund the Revolution. Sea captain Jeremiah Banning was a war hero. The Rev. Thomas Bacon wrote the first compilation of Maryland laws. Matthew Tilghman was known as the father of statehood. Col. Tench Tilghman was aide-de-camp to George Washington and the man who carried the message of General Cornwallis’ British surrender to the Continental Congress.

But the war ended Oxford’s glory days. No more British ships in the port, and Oxford fell into a slumber. After the Civil War, the railroad arrived, and Oxford revived with the oyster business. But that eventually ended, too.

Today, Oxford is a sleepy village with vintage homes that face the bay, which is actually the Tred Avon River. There’s a cool harbor with all kinds of boats, and a strip facing the bay with about 10 houses and a homemade beach no bigger than eight feet wide and 50 feet long.

It’s idyllic and gorgeous. Seems like a great place to relax if you can rent one of those houses that abut the bay. But otherwise, virtually no commerce.

Except for the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry, which goes back four centuries.

After we drove through Oxford, I punched in the GPS for St. Michael’s. I came to rely on the Maps app a lot this trip, since I was dealing with a place I’d never been and a place with constant twisting, turning roads.

I noticed that the trip to St. Michael’s was going to be a 31-minute drive, but the voice on my app had other ideas. She told me to turn here, turn there, in directions that were taking me right back to the bay. And suddenly, I realized. This option was a ferry ride.

The Oxford-Bellevue Ferry is so low-key, we didn’t even know it when we passed it.

The Oxford-Bellevue Ferry has been operating since 1683 and considers itself the oldest privately-owned ferry in the U.S. Hard to beat a straight flush, and hard to beat 1683.

The ferry, which claims to be capable of taking nine cars at a time but seemed pretty loaded with the five on our trip, costs $12 one way for car and driver, plus a $1 charge for each extra passengers. Cyclists cost less, and we had 6-7 bicyclists on our trip.

The trip goes three quarters of a mile across the river and takes about seven minutes.

The ferry is closed from December through March and is open in November only for weekends. It has been running continuously since 1836. Things are old in Maryland.

I love ferry boats. They are a nod to other times. We rode one last summer in Canada, going from Prince Edward Island to Nova Scotia on the massive Confederation, a ship that is part of the Northumberland Ferry. That boat was huge. Able to carry 220 cars, with multiple parking decks and all kinds of commerce on ship.

The Talbot, the vessel for the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry, is not a ship. It’s a boat. The deck was, I don’t know, maybe 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. But the breeze was nice and the scenery spectacular and the company sublime. Took seven minutes and I would have been content with 70.

When we crossed the river, we found Bellevue to be even less of a town than Oxford. But we had shaved about 20 miles off the trip to St. Michael’s and soon enough found ourselves in another quaint village, only this one was bustling.

Our one regret about the Eastern Shore is that we didn’t know about St. Michael’s. We didn’t have time to stop. We only drove through. But that’s the kind of place the Dish could have stayed all day.

St. Michael’s has a population of a little more than 1,000, but in the summers and on weekends, the town is bustling. High-quality inns and restaurants adorn the village, with lots of shops. The waterfront is nearby, and cruises connect St. Michael’s with Annapolis across Chesapeake Bay. If we ever make it back to the Eastern Shore, a trip to St. Michael’s is in order.

Thanks for the tip, Ryan Minor.

BACK ACROSS THE BAY

If you’re going to leave the Eastern Shore, Saturday is a good day to do it. I can only assume that Sundays evenings are a nightmare to go back across the Bay Bridge, which spans 4.3 miles and go high above Chesapeake Bay.

Traffic was quite light, and that didn’t change even when getting back into the D.C.-Baltimore metro area. We zipped to the airport. Our only problem was finding a gas station to refuel the rental car. When you can’t see the gas stations from the interstate – which you can’t from most Maryland freeways, because of the trees – you rely on road signs and your phone apps, neither of which are all that reliable.

But we got to Thurgood Marshall Airport – BWI – in plenty of time and were at the terminal well ahead of our 7:20 p.m. flight. We stopped in a Mexican food joint for a snack. The Dish had guacamole and I had crab quesadillas (too much quesadilla, not enough crab). We had eaten lunch at the Green Turtle, a long-established chain of Maryland sports bars recommended by Jim Traber, a Maryland native. We had cheeseburgers. Sometimes you just need a cheeseburger. The Green Turtle was OK; it had a private television at every booth, which is a fantastic touch but doesn’t help you much at noon on a June Saturday.

We boarded our flight and it was full. The Dish likes window seats, so I sat in the middle and got quite cramped. I tried to type out my West Virginia notes, but that didn’t work well from a middle seat. So I just read and tried to sleep and soon enough we landed at Will Rogers, glad to have experienced the Eastern Shore but glad to be back in Oklahoma.