Tuesday - Crisfield, MD

Terrific Elderhostel day! We started out with a second talk by a native Crisfielder/city councilman/hospital charge nurse - a very knowledgeable and entertaining guy. Next, he took us on a walking tour of the area, with visits to the only soft-shell crab packing plant and hard crab picking plant left in Crisfield. The industry has declined substantially. It was fascinating to see how these delicious foods are prepared for market. After lunch, we had a tour of the Tawes Museum (the sponsor of the program) and then a talk by a Museum volunteer. This D-Day survivor showed us how a crab pot works. He also has set up a model of a crab shanty with "pens" holding live crabs. We got to see a crab in the act of shedding her shell - coming out of the old hard one into the new, much larger soft one. This shell will harden in a few hours if the crab is left alone. It's really a fascinating life cycle, and we were shown so much of it.

Unfortunately, after all that, we didn't have soft-shell crabs for dinner. Dinner was good, but land-based. 8^( , We were told that we weren't through getting crabs for meals, so our hopes are high for that.

There was also the news day about the Elderhostel name change. It's changing to Exploritas. WHAT???? How stupid sounding is that?!? And according to our coordinator, the programs will now be open to anyone over 22 years of age. It's going to make for a lot of changes in programs. They are obviously abandoning the previous target consumer of older and retired folks, and heading for a younger demographic. It'll be interesting to see the comments, the fallout, and the results of this new direction for the program.