Easton is the county seat of Talbot County and the unofficial capital of Maryland's Eastern Shore, a handsome town of about seventeen thousand people on the flat, creek-slashed land between the Chesapeake Bay and the Choptank River. It is a place of brick courthouses, tree-lined streets, galleries and boutiques, and an old hotel on the main street, and it has an air of quiet prosperity. For a rider at the end of a day, it is a comfortable place to get off the bike and find a good meal.
The shore's story is one of water. Waterfowl, oysters, crabs and fish brought the first settlers, and the culture still revolves around the bay, with its working boats, old boatyards and hunting traditions. In November, the town hosts a large waterfowl festival, with decoy carving, painting and retriever demonstrations. Nearby, the Third Haven Quaker Meeting House, built in the seventeenth century, is among the oldest surviving wooden religious buildings in the country, and visitors can see its simple, plain interior. Frederick Douglass, born into slavery in Talbot County, is also tied to the area, and several sites in the region tell his story.
The roads around Easton are the opposite of mountain riding. They are flat, straight and quiet, running between fields of corn and soybeans, through marshes and past old farmhouses, with long bridges over the creeks. It is gentle, meditative riding, ideal for a late afternoon, when the light turns gold on the water. Wind off the bay can be brisk, and in summer the air is hot and sticky, with mosquitoes and greenhead flies near the marshes. Speeds are generally low, and local police pay attention.
A short ride from Easton is Saint Michaels, a sleepy harbour town with a maritime museum and a lighthouse, where many people go for lunch and a walk. For food, order crab, the blue crab of the Chesapeake, steamed and cracked with a mallet at a paper-covered table, or a crab cake, which here is mostly crab and little filler. Everything you need, including fuel, is available in Easton itself, and the evenings are pleasant on a restaurant terrace.