02-22-2023 Primetime Living - Flipbook - Page 30
30 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Gotta get away, continued
from page 22
You Don’t Know Nothin’
Bout Groove City
Cambridge has been known as Groove
City for decades. It was always known
for jazz, with the greats like Billie Holiday,
Cab Calloway and Etta James appearing
in clubs along Pine Street. As the music
changed, so did Cambridge, but the
residents stilled grooved to the beats.
Cambridge is undergoing a renaissance.
It also has a rich history of music, the
arts, and it has a pulse to it and strong
sense of community. It also has a turbulent past with two parallel main drags:
Race Street for the white population and
Pine Street for the Black population.
What else would you like? There
are arts and crafts, antiques, wonderful shopping choices, horseback riding, farm stands with fresh produce, a
Ghost Walk, and the Blackwater National
Wildlife Refuge. Dorchester County has,
literally, something for everyone.
Massanuten Resort
Located a little south of Luray
Caverns in the Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia, Massanuten Resort (www.
massresort.com), just three hours from
Baltimore, “is one of the premier allseasons resort destinations on the East
Coast.” If you’re looking for a place to
go for a long weekend, it has activities to
satisfy every interest all year long. Best
of all, Massanuten is constantly adding
exciting new options.
If outdoor activities are on your list of
favorites, this is the place to go, but there
are just as many activities indoors. With
6,000 acres of mountain, Massanuten
has everything you could wish for from
skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing,
to golf, horseback riding and mountain
biking. You can choose to go fishing, hiking or travel the river in a canoe or kayak.
There is an indoor/outdoor waterpark to
splash around in any time of year.
No matter when you visit, you can be
as active or as lazy as you’d like. From
December to mid-March, the winter season, snow sports reign. There’s skiing,
ice skating, and you can take advantage
of the indoor water park. One of the two
golf courses is open year-round, or you
can spend time in its beautiful day spa –
or experience all of them!
The spring season runs through
Memorial Day. Visit the escape room, try
out the virtual reality (VR), perfect your
swing in one of the two top golf swing
suites or in one of the recreation centers.
If it’s warm enough, go mountain biking
and savor the view.
During the summer, from Memorial
Day to Labor Day, take advantage of the
indoor/outdoor waterparks with the hot
tubs and kiddie pools or the 30 miles
of bike trails. There are weekly activities and two festivals. Of course, all the
indoor activities – the VR and escape
rooms and recreations centers – are
available any time you’re there.
Come the fall season, from Labor Day
until the end of November, some activities on the mountain are being prepared
for snow, but not all. You can still mountain bike, take part in arts and crafts
activities and don’t forget the weekly
dining events.
There’s still more to do than men-
It was only after the radio station named
a performance space “Groove City
Studio” that the WHCP board learned
about the city’s rich musical history.
Cambridge’s Black community rebuked
the idea that the “white part of town” had
any claim to the Groove City name and
the station came under a lot of criticism.
While it was hard at times to find people
willing to sit down and talk about racism,
González said the resulting conversations were incredible.
“We had a wide-ranging conversation
about Cambridge’s history,” González
explains, “and understood how we had
unknowingly claimed a piece of that
heritage by naming the studio based
on a narrative the white community
didn’t own. Cambridge earned the name
Groove City. We have to talk about
the city’s history, about Pine Street.
Cambridge can be a leader in race
relations and there’s a growing group
of people including the Eastern Shore
Network for Change and Alpha Genesis
who are dedicated to this.”
Both “downtowns” thrived for years
until local industry declined and jobs
were lost. This was the force behind
The Cambridge Movement, a nationally significant chapter in the civil rights
struggle. It was here in the Pine Street
community, and in demonstrations on
neighboring Race Street, that community activists sought to expand the
goals for the civil rights movement from
the public accommodations and voting
rights that dominated in the Deep South
into the areas of housing, jobs, and eco- Check MPT’s local listings for when the
nomic justice.
documentary will air. It’s worth seeing.
César González, Pastor of the Cambridge And for more on Pastor González and
Adventist Church, was a moving force what drove him to make the documenbehind “You Don’t Know Nothin’ Bout tary, watch his short video: The Fight
Groove City,” a 60-minute documentary for Racial Justice on the Shore: Pastor
produced by local radio station WHCP César González (https://www.youtube.
in conjunction with a community advi- com/watch?v=50A0c4kzzzs)
sory committee. It will air in March on
Maryland Public Television.
tioned above. Massanuten has something for every age group and special
activities and events almost every single
week including music groups performing on weekends. Go to a wine-tasting
or cooking demonstrations, try scuba
diving, or take an art workshop. You
can also take workshops and classes,
maybe in sketching, ukulele, meditation,
or harmonica. These are great ways to
personalize your vacation.
In addition to offering military discounts, it offers specials and packages
for lodging with add-ons, like lift tickets,
spa, golf and more. For more information,
call 540-289-9441 and visit the website.
And if you want the perfect venue for a
special event – a bachelor party or family
reunion, for example – Massanuten can
accommodate you. And there’s always
more to discover.
One treat, even before you go, is to
take advantage of its webcams. You can
see skiers and snowboarders tackling
the slopes, but also visit at night. Watch
the machines making snow or catch the
Northern Lights tubing when the whole
hill lights up.
Morgan Mowbray, Massanuten’s
Marketing Manager summed it up perfectly. “Leave and come back and there’s
always something new to try out, no matter how often your visit.”