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