New England 9/29 Maine

On Sunday we left Connecticut, heading for Maine. First we had to drive across Rhode Island. The entire state is less than twice the size of Allegheny County where we live.

Then we cut across a corner of New Hampshire. Poppa was amazed! The first 4 signs on I-95, put up by the state of New Hampshire, were:

"State Liquor Store and Lottery 1 mile"
"State Liquor Store and Lottery 1/2 mile"
"State Liquor Store and Lottery next right"
"State Liquor Store and Lottery -->"

And there it was, with a full parking lot at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning. Poppa says the only 2 states that can top that are Texas, where you can by a beer when leaving a bar to have as a "roadie" while you drive home, and Louisiana, where they have drive-through daiquiri stands. (Maybe those two things aren't true anymore.)

Then we got to Maine, and the first 4 signs were:

"No Trucks Left Lane"
"It's the Law: Buckle Up"
"Trucks use right lane"
Maine has a TOUGH drunk driving law"

These were followed by:
"It's the law: move left for stopped emergency vehicles"
"No whining" (just kidding)
"Watch for moose on roadway" (we paid attention to this one!)

Poppa says that if Missouri is the "Show me state", Maine must be the "Mother may I? state".

Earlier this year when Nana and Poppa traded in the older trailer on Harvey, they also traded in the pickup truck on something to tow behind Harvey:




And, boy, is the Subaru popular in New England! They're as common as stone walls.

Nana has been having fun listening to the New England accent, especially in TV ads. Part of it is described as "dropping the R's", such as when they talk about "Ha'vad" University. Poppa says they don't drop the R's, they just put them in a bag so they can use them when they talk about that big island south of Florida called "Cubar".

- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/28 Guilford Green

On Saturday we drove to the town of Guilford. It was settled in 1639 and established in 1643. The Henry Whitfield house is the oldest dwelling house in Connecticut and the oldest stone house in North America. It served as a fort during the early days of the settlement:




The town has a Green, a large grassy park in the middle of town with beautiful old trees. It is a nice central attraction and meeting area. Our tour guide, Lauren, told us it was not always so nice. The settlers used to graze their sheep and cattle there and it had a swampy area. Finally they decided to clean it up, and it was worth it. Here's another typical New England church, seen from the green:




We looked at a lot of old houses. This one was a "Sabbath House":



Try to read the sign:



People who came to town for church on Sunday couldn't always get back home that night, so they would stay over at one of the Sabbath houses.

Here are some of the other houses on the Green:



























The one above is the Hyland House, built by the ancestors of one of the women in our tour group. She is also related to the builder of the Whitfield house.

Dottie and I got tired of looking at houses, so we hid out in a big old maple tree:



One of Poppa's favorite things in town was the old fashioned hardware store. Last week we stopped at a Walmart to get a small electric heater for Harvey. We had two choices, and the one we got didn't work very well. At this little hardware store, there were 6 different models, and the one we picked works very well. We dropped the other one off at Walmart later.

Poppa wanted to wait until we got to Maine to have lobster, but we couldn't wait so we stopped at The Place:




A really funky place. Maybe you can see this video from YouTube:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gOIuSW_raHE&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DgOIuSW_raHE

- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/27 Mystic

On Friday we did a serious tour of Mystic. We thought "Old Mystic Village" sounded interesting, but it was just a collection of 60 tourist trap shops.

Next door is the Mystic Aquarium, which was very interesting. We saw penguins, seals, sharks, touched rays as they swam past, saw lots of different fish habitats, watched and electric eel. My favorite was the beluga whale. You should have heard the kids squeal and scream when they tapped on the glass and he opened his mouth:




After the aquarium, we had lunch at Mystic Pizza, "A little slice of heaven" and "the pizza that made the movie famous". Nana told me a movie was made here in 1988 with Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, maybe the first time he was on screen. I didn't even know they made movies that long ago.

After lunch we visited the Seaport Museum, which had lots of boats in the water and lots of buildings where we learned about making barrels out of oak (just like in Kentucky), boats out of wood, candles out of wax, and all the other things they had to make by hand. Poppa especially like the boats:













We toured the harbor on a steam engine boat:

- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/26 Block Island

On Thursday we drove into Rhode Island. Poppa said it's a cute little state. We went to Port Judith and took the high speed ferry to Block Island.

On the ferry, Nana noticed that Poppa was plugging earphones into his iPhone. "Are you going to entertain yourself?" Poppa said "No - I'm just going to listen to music." Nana groaned and punched him in the arm.

We walked around for a while, and Poppa visited the local Home Depot:



Dottie and I found a playground to climb on:




The island has lots of fancy old hotels:




We took a taxi tour with Catherine Andrews, a very nice hippy-ish lady. (How many taxi drivers walk around barefoot, only putting on flip-flops to drive because it's a taxi rule?)



Catherine had lots to tell us about Block Island as we looked at the sights:




But the story she had to tell about her parents was even more interesting. If you Google "Sperry Andrews" you will find that her parents were artists who became friends with the owner of Weir Farm in Ridgefield. They eventually bought the farm and worked hard to have it preserved as a National Historic Site under the National Park Service. We hope to stop for a visit when we go back down through Connecticut toward the end of our vacation.


- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/25 Mystic

On Wednesday we drove to Mystic CT. After setting up at the campground, we drove into Mystic to look around. The lady at the visitors' center was very helpful and highlighted things on a map for us. She's from Ft. Myers in Florida and used to travel around in a 40' motorhome with her husband.

We drove around to se where things were for later. Right next door to Mystic is Noank:




More tomorrow.

- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/23 Twain and Stowe

On Tuesday we drove to Hartford. At one time it ad the highest per capita income in the country, and attracted some of the most famous people in the arts. Among these were Harriet Beecher Stowe (born in Litchfield), author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and Mark Twain, author of Huck Finn". Their houses are right next to each other, so we toured both.

H.B. Stowe's house is very nice, but not especially showy. She came from a religious family, and her writings and abolitionist feelings were most important. Nana loved the Victorian furniture and learning about life in those days. Our tour guide said that her books were translated into many languages, including Swedish. Poppa saw a book in her library titled "Uncle Tom's Stuga", which the guide said was the Swedish version. He'll check with Eva.

Next we went next door to Mark Twain's house. What a difference! He and Mrs. (Twain) Clemens were climbing the social ladder as fast as they could. The house cost about $45,000 at the beginning to build, with a rather plain interior. Mrs. Clemens in particular enjoyed being involved in the design and construction. After Mr. Clemens published a few more books, they hired Louis Tiffany at about $20,000 to fancy up the interior and make it acceptable for the wealthy and famous guests they invited to almost continuous dinner parties.















Mark Twain is one of Poppa's favorite authors, and he promises to encourage all of the grand kids to read his stories when they get older. I think he's going to read some to us when we get back home.




- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England 9/23

On Monday we drove to West Cornwall to see a covered bridge:



It was built in 1841 over the Housatonic River. It has the patented Town Lattice and Queenpost design inside, held together with wooden pegs:




Then we went to Kent Falls:

We continued our drive, enjoying the scenery. We knew there was scenery because we kept seeing signs like:

"Scenic drive next 6.8 miles:
"Scenic drive next 2.7 miles"
"Scenic drive next 1.3 miles"
"Scenic drive next 200 yards" (just kidding)

We drove around Lake Waramaug and found a nice place to build a house:



Check it out through Google at "17 arrowpoint ct".

We ate at a nice old tavern in Kent. Dottie and I worked off lunch climbing on some local sculpture:






- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England: 9/22 - 9/24

On Sunday we drove to Bantam CT, and will be here until Wednesday. We cut across part of New York State into Connecticut on a beautiful sunny day, with beautiful scenery. One of the first things we noticed was the abundance of low stone walls along property lines, mostly just stacked up without any mortar ("dry stacked" or "rubble"). The glaciers dropped a lot of these stones when they melted, and farmers had to move them out of their fields before they could plow and plant crops.

The second thing we noticed is that Connecticut doesn't seem to have any trashy people - houses are painted, yards are mowed and landscaped, and concrete block foundations are only found under houses, not cars.

We drove around Litchfield a little bit - it was very wealthy once, and still has a lot of beautiful houses. Harriet Beecher Stowe ("Uncle Tom's Cabin") was born here - we'll see more about her on Tuesday.

Litchfield has a stereotypical New England church:




It's a Congregational Church. Poppa said "all churches have congregations - that doesn't make any sense." I had done my reading and told him that "Congregational" is kind of the modern word for "Puritan", which many of the early settlers were.


- Tigger and Dottie seeing the country with Nana and Poppa

New England

O.K., O.K. - I know I'm behind on the New England blog.

I'll try to catch up, if Nana will stop interrupting me.

We had a little trouble getting started on the trip. On Thursday, September 19, Poppa had to take Harvey (remember, that's the "RV" - get it?) to get the wiring done for towing the car. Just as it was getting light, Poppa saw something black in the road in front of the car ahead of him. That car moved to the right to miss it, so Poppa moved to the right. Then the thing started rolling to the right, so Poppa moved left to straddle it. It moved left, and a head popped up along with some white stripes -SKUNK!! Poppa swerved left and missed it! I don'tthink the mechanic would have been willing to crawl under the car to do the wiring if Poppa had hit the skunk.

We were going to leave early in the morning on Saturday, September 21, but Poppa woke up with an ear ache and had to got to UrgiCare.

We didn't get on the road until 12:30. We drove in pouring rain to East Stroudsburg PA, with several stops along the way to wipe up the water that was sneaking under the front slide onto the floor. Another maintenance problem for Poppa to take care of. It was dark when we got to the campground, so we watched a movie and went to bed.

The next post will be about New England.


- Tigger and Dottie seeing New England with Nana and Poppa