8/25/18: We couldn’t check in to the marina until noon, so we had a nice morning sitting at anchor in Trippe Creek. We were looking forward to a shower and to explore Oxford. We had half a day, which should be enough given the town’s size. But the gods deemed we shouldn’t have half a day, so they threw a little wrench in our plans.

We arrived, tied up, and checked in. After we showered and got cleaned up, we were ready to explore the town. It was about 1:30pm, and as we were just about ready to leave, we heard the water pump kick in. That’s not entirely unusual – it does that at random every day or two. What is unusual, however, is for it to happen again within 5 minutes. And then again 5 minutes after that. Great, we have a water leak! We followed the lines and quickly found the issue. The cold water line running through the wall into the head had a kink in it, and was squirting water into a storage compartment! We could tell it had just started, as everything in there was wet, but not soaked. Nothing was up against the line, so we don’t know when the kink happened, and we also don’t know why it chose that moment in time to start spraying water everywhere. What we did know is that we had to fix it. The problem was that the hoses are all hard plastic lines from the 80’s, similar to today’s PEX lines. And we didn’t have any spare parts for the stuff, let alone a section of line to replace the kinked section. What we DID have, though, was a section of clear vinyl hose, and 2 extra adapters from our water heater project earlier in the spring. Luckily, the adapters fit on the existing connectors at either end of the kinked line, and the vinyl hose fit on the connector nipples (and was long enough)! Two hours later, we were back up and running, but by now most of the day was gone. Well, there wasn’t much else to do but go have some ice cream!

Just down from the marina was an ice cream shop that was listed in the top 5 ice cream shops on Trip Advisor. We stood in line and each got a small dish (2 scoops). Kate had a scoop each of strawberry and salted caramel brownie, and Pat had Bavarian double chocolate and blueberry sorbet. Yes, it was yummy!! After that, we took a walk along the main street. Besides homes, we only saw The Oxford Museum (closed), one gift shop, a small grocery store, a realty company, and a couple restaurants. That was the extent of what was in Oxford. We stopped at one of the restaurants and had dinner, then walked back to the boat.

As we were walking, we took notice of the homes in town. Oxford is known for it’s old homes and white picket fences. Most everything we saw were from the 1700’s and 1800’s, and most had white picket fences. They were all kept up very nicely and were beautifully landscaped. The sidewalks in front of the homes were made of red brick, but each home had a different pattern in the brick laying: some were laid in straight lines, some were staggered, and some were done in a herringbone pattern. We would occasionally see a home or other building that had a small, 4 section piece of picket fence in their yard painted with a small mural – apparently another thing Oxford is known for. The last thing we noticed were the cars. As we walked, we saw mostly Mercedes-Benz’s, BMW’s, Audis, with the occasional Subaru or Porsche mixed in. We didn’t see any Fords, Chevrolets, Mazdas, or Toyotas. There was obviously a bit of affluence here in Oxford, too.

We also walked past the oldest known ferry to exist in the US, the Oxford Bellevue ferry. It was established in 1683, and has been in continuous operation since 1836. Neat!

Our time in Oxford was short – even shorter because of our waterline leak – but we didn’t mind as there really wasn’t much to see, anyway. It was still a really neat town with all the old houses, picket fences, and fence-murals around town. Not someplace we’d choose to live (we couldn’t afford it anyway), but certainly interesting to see!

Pics of Oxford