4 Best Sights in The Eastern Shore, Maryland

This reproduction of a 1768 Colonial schooner by the same name was launched in 2001. With a length of 97 feet, the original Sultana was the smallest schooner ever registered on the Royal Navy Lists. The modern mission of this "Schoolship of the Chesapeake" is to provide unique, hands-on educational experiences in Colonial history and environmental science. Several two-hour public sails are available each month from April through November. Daylong public sails are scheduled on occasion. The Sultana can be seen close-up when she is anchored in the Chester River, at the end of Cannon Street. Additionally, half-day guided paddle tours operated by Sultana management are also available a few times a year in various Kent Count rivers.

One of the region's finest, this nine-building complex chronicles the Bay's rich history of boatbuilding, commercial fishing, navigating, and hunting in compelling detail. Exhibits on the 18-acre waterfront site include two of the Bay's unique skipjacks among the museum's more than 80 historic regional boats. There are also the restored 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse, a working boatyard, and a "waterman's wharf" with shanties plus oystering and crabbing tools. In the Bay Building you can see a crabbing skiff as well as a dugout canoe hewn by Native Americans. The Waterfowl Building contains carved decoys and stuffed birds, including wood ducks, mallards, and swans.

Jacob Fussell began a wholesale ice-cream business in Baltimore in 1851, the first in the United States. Today privately owned and operated ice-cream parlors abound along Maryland's Eastern Shore, but Dumser's Dairyland, established in 1939, is the choice for longtime beachgoers; its vast "factory" and parlor are open from noon to midnight in the summertime. In addition to its main South Atlantic Avenue outfit, it also operates branch locations at 49th Street and Coastal and 124th Street and Coastal, as well as three smaller outlets on the boardwalk.

At the south end of the boardwalk, this thrill center has a "boomerang" roller coaster; the rickety and terrifying "Zipper" wood coaster; and the Hirschell Spellman Carousel, from 1902. The park has been owned by the Trimper family since it opened in 1890.