St. Mary's City.

A replica of the former chapel, St. Mary's City.

I'm not sure what we were expecting.  Perhaps the lesson here is to do a little bit of research before a proposed daytrip!  But, St. Mary's City was just not what we thought it was.  Instead of a historical, yet working city, we found a Williamsburg-like experience--a sort of hands-on-history tour of one of the first settlements in the United States.  (Actually it was a former capital of the Maryland colony.)

Recreated barns and houses, St. Mary's City, MD.

Here's the question I have for myself after the visit to St. Mary's City: why didn't I do some research?  Why did we assume it was something it wasn't?  We envisioned walking along a main street and eating lunch at a little restaurant.  Instead, we found interpretive trails through replica buildings and footprints of other buildings marked off so we had a virtual sense of the former village.  I'm not complaining here.  I'm just blogging about this as a lesson: know where you are going!  This sort of trip would be great if our parents were in town.  It was the off-season sort of so we had the recreated settlement to ourselves mostly. 

A small graveyard attached to an old church,
overlooks the Chesapeake Bay.

Still, I think we returned home thinking we wasted an afternoon.  Weekends are so quick, so fleeting that a disappointing daytrip can make you feel that you didn't get the most out of your free time!