Monday, June 27
About halfway through, we entered New York State, where we got gas at a Pilot. It was not very crowded, and we could pull in and out quickly. It did not rain on us for most of the trip, though the threat of rain followed us the entire trip. We saw plenty of wet roads and cars telling us we had just missed it.
Branch Brook Campground
It was a nice scenic trip, and we arrived at Branch Brook Campground at 3:07 pm. I got a call from the campground about 30 minutes prior telling me my site number and instructions on where I could pick up my paperwork, and though the office was supposed to be open until 4 pm, she stated she was closing up at 1500 that day.
Two other campers arrived at the same time, and of course, one was backing up into the spot right next to us, and the other was right across from us. We were second in line, so we waited until the one beside us got set before we backed into ours. Our site dipped in the middle and was very muddy, but we could quickly find the “sweet spot” where the trailer was level without using the blocks. I was fortunate again to get set up before it started to rain again.
Since it was getting late in the day and starting to rain, we decided to stay at the campsite for the rest of the day and plan our events for the week. We did watch some YouTube documentaries on the history of Connecticut to prepare us for the week.
Tuesday, June 28
We left the campground at 9:30 and headed south to the coast. I wanted to see the Atlantic.
Pez Visitor Center
We stopped at the Pez Visitor Center at 1030, just short of seeing the coast. The visitor center allowed you to peek into the production area where the Pez candies were made and packaged. Outside the viewing area was a gift shop with a vast Pez dispenser collection. the world’s largest Pez dispenser and several other large ones, a PEZ motorcycle built by Orange County Choppers, and some PEZ video games, We had to pay a $5/ea admission and recieved a lanyard and a $2/ea coupon for the retail store which we spent on post cards. We played a game where we had to find certain Pez dispensers among the collections and get their names. After seeing them all, we were awarded a Pez dispenser after spinning a wheel. It was not easy because of the number of Pez dispensers, but it was fun. We left at 11:41 am and headed toward the coast again.
New Haven
When we left the Pez factory, we drove along the coast toward the Long Wharf and an area known as Food Truck Paradise, where dozens of food trucks would stage themselves for lunch.
We then drove around the dock area some more before heading downtown to see Yale University.
We drove around the downtown area and admired the many gothic structures we found. Yale University had a wall around many of its campus buildings, so we could not drive through the central area. I had thought about stopping at Louis Lunch, another contender for having invented the first hamburger, but the crowded streets scared me off.
East Rock Park
We then drove up to East Rock Park for lunch, which was supposed to have an excellent viewpoint and monuments. When we arrived around 12:50, we found the park was closed to traffic. We found a parking spot in a tiny parking area at the entrance, and after a brief walk into the park, we returned to the truck and ate our lunch there.
Two Roads Brewery, Stratford, CT
We drove south along the coast through many depressed neighborhoods until we spotted a large brewery. We did not find any cars in the parking lot of the flashy building, but it was only 2:30, so we decided to stop anyway. We found the doors to the building locked, so we walked around the place, taking pictures of their tanks, hop garden, and the large outdoor area with an old airstream converted to a serving area.
While walking around, we found some brewery directional signs and some sidewalk signs pointing to “Area Two.” The sidewalk signs pointed to the closed building, but the brewery signs seemed to point in a different direction. After about 15 minutes of frustration, Lisa called them, and someone in their tasting room/bar gave us directions to their tasting room on the second floor of a 100-year-old renovated building a block away. They even stood on the roof while guiding us in and let us through the back door. We found out later that the first building we stopped at was their recently built experimental beer brewery called “Area Two.” The main Two Roads Brewery was in the restored century-old building.
The tasting room was very nice. We ordered a flight of beers and admired how nice the bar was. We enjoyed the artwork on their labels. When we went to pay for our beers, the bartender said they were complimentary. I think the person who directed us to the tasting room was an executive of the company and had told the bartender to comp us the beer.
St Margaret Shrine, Bridgeport, CT
We then continued to St Margaret Shrine in Bridgeport. This grotto-like shrine was created during World War II to provide people with a place to pray for the soldiers. The shrine filled a small city block with various religious statues and pathways around a large rocky ledge at its center. We always enjoy walking around shrines and this one was in surprisingly good shape despite it being old, exposed to the elements, and unguarded.
Oops – The Fall
As we were about to leave, Lisa backed up while taking a picture and fell off a step. When she fell to the ground, she hit her elbow, which split open and started to bleed. I quickly looked up urgent care on my phone and rushed her to AFC Urgent Care nearby. It took about four hours for them to treat her by cleaning and gluing the wound together. While Lisa waited in the waiting room, I had to stay in the truck outside as a COVID mitigation measure. They did not have x-ray equipment, so they could not determine if anything was broken, but they suspected it was ok. They prescribed some medication, but since the pharmacies were all closed by the time she was seen. Since there were no Walgreens pharmacies near the campground and we planned to leave early in the morning and drive to Mystic the following day, we had them send the prescription to a pharmacy nearby so we could pick it up when they opened. It was almost 9 pm when we finally left the urgent care and 10 pm when we finally got home.
Wednesday, June 29
We left around 8 am and headed northeast along the coast. We arrived in Groton around 9:20 am to pick up Lisa’s antibiotic medication, but the prescription was incorrect, and they had to call the urgent care to get it corrected. They could not reach the doctor immediately, so they told us to return in about an hour.
Submarine Force Museum
We decided to visit the Submarine Force Museum while we waited. Located near the Naval Submarine Base New London, this free museum is most notable for being the home of the first nuclear submarine in the world, the USS Nautilus. Unfortunately, the USS Nautilus was undergoing renovations and was not at the museum. The museum still had a lot of interesting exhibits, including midget submarines from World War II, working periscopes, salvaged parts from the nuclear USS NR-1, a submarine control room, models of submarines, and the Explorer, an early research submarine. The sail section from the USS George Washington, the first nuclear-powered ballistic missile sub, is on outdoor display near the main entrance. Two big rings outside the museum show how large museums have evolved. The small ring represents the diameter of the USS Holland (SS-1), and the large one represents the USS Ohio (SS-726).
Back to Walgreens
Around noon, we went back up to Walgreens, but they still had not been able to fix the prescription, so Lisa called our primary care doctor back in Kansas City, and they sent the pharmacy the correct prescription. It was about 12:45 pm before we started toward Mystic again.
Mystic Seaport Museum
Mystic Seaport was only about 20 minutes away from Groton. The town of Mystic is a bustling, touristy seacoast town. As we crawled through their downtown area, we saw the Mystic Pizza storefront where the movie Mystic Pizza was filmed and the huge counter-balances of their draw bridge.
After getting through the downtown area, we headed to the Mystic Seaport Museum. Mystic Seaport Museum is the largest maritime museum in the United States. It is notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats and its re-creation of a 19th-century seafaring village. It has more than 60 historic buildings, most rare commercial structures.
We decided to eat lunch on their cafe’s patio outside the Seaport when we arrived.
We then enjoyed walking on and through the various ships and buildings in the museum. Some of our highlights were the long “rope walk” building that demonstrated how the large ropes were made. Another was a presentation by several “coopers” explaining how a wooden barrel was disassembled and reassembled. A large-scale model of Mystic Bay showed how the town would have looked a hundred years ago as a whaling town.
We paid for a 25-minute ride on the Liberty tour boat that mostly took us along the coast of the museum to highlight some of the ships and exhibits at the Museum. We also cruised past some of the boats being worked on in the Shipyard, including a Viking ship that was currently shrink-wrapped.
Stonington Beach and Lighthouse
It was about 5 pm when we left Mystic Seaport Museum mentally exhausted, but we still wanted to check out a lighthouse in Stonington about 20 minutes away. The village of Stonington was a pretty coastal town. We parked at the Dubois Beach parking lot at Stonington Point and walked to the 1840 stone lighthouse. The museum was closed, but we could still walk around the grounds. We then returned to the beach and enjoyed the first beautiful beach I had seen on the Atlantic Coast.
We then drove directly back to the campsite by 7:15 pm.
Thursday, June 30
Lock 12
Near Cheshire, CT, we stopped at the Lock 12 Historic Park to see the old hand-operated lock. The 80-mile Farmington Canal was dug between 1825 and 1835 by Irish immigrants between Long Island Sound in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Connecticut River in Northampton, Massachusetts. Of the 28 locks built on the canal, Lock 12 is the only one that remains fully intact.
We had trouble finding the lock because it was not at the park entrance, and no signs pointed to its location. Since the park was a very popular place for bicyclists riding the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, we just asked someone who was getting their bikes out where it was. We finally found the lock about a half mile further into the park.
The lock was restored in 1980, so you can see how the lock gates were manually closed. The canal itself was overgrown and now just a ditch. The small museum near it was closed.
Castle Craig
After leaving the park, we headed to the nearby Castle Craig. Castle Craig is a 32-foot-tall stone tower on a cliff in Hubbard Park in Meriden, CT. The wealthy industrialist Walter Hubbard donated the tower and the 1,800 acres surrounding it in 1900.
A three-mile-long road took us through the park and past a reservoir up the steep mountain to a parking lot at the top. The tower had some metal stairs that took you to the top, where you had a great view of the surrounding area. There was also a viewing platform at the bottom. Although a plaque indicated that East Peak is “the highest point within 25 miles of the coast from Maine to Florida,” I was not correct as several mountains sit higher, including West Peak, just 2,000 feet to the west of it.
Chester-Hadlyme Ferry
We then headed over to Gillette Castle State Park.
The Chester-Hadlyme Ferry crosses between the town of Chester, Connecticut, and the village of Hadlyme. It is Connecticut’s second oldest continuously operating ferry service and is a designated state historical landmark. Initial ferry service began at this location as early as 1769. The state took over operations in 1917. It almost closed in 2011, but public pressure kept it going.
It cost $5 for us to cross. The ferry was relatively small and could hold no more than four cars. It took us less than 5 minutes to cross. Gillette Castle sat high on the Seven Sisters cliffs, facing us across the river.
When we got to the other side, we stopped at the small park they had next to the landing, took some pictures, and ate lunch on a bench overlooking the river and the ferry. We then drove up the hill to the castle.
Gillette Castle State Park
The castle was originally a private residence commissioned and designed by William Gillette (1853–1937), an American actor who is most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on stage. Gillette lived at this estate from 1919 to 1937. The estate was purchased by the state of Connecticut in 1943 for a price of $29,000.
William Gillette’s “castle” was built between 1914 and 1919, and an addition was completed in 1924.
The 3-story-plus-tower, 24-room, 14,000 sq ft home is built of wood, cement, and local Connecticut field stone, supported by a steel framework. The exterior of the home is covered in field stone. Woodwork within the home is hand-hewn southern white oak. Insulation included seaweed and paper. It cost over $1 million at the time. In the years Gillette lived in the home, he led and supervised thousands of refinements by local craftsmen.
Several oddities exist inside the home that Gillette personally designed and said to be examples of his “creative genius.” These include:
- 47 unique doors and door locks throughout the castle. Each door is equipped with an external Steampunk-like latch intricately carved of wood. Trick locks made unlocking these doors a puzzle.
- Unique furnishings include built-in couches and a movable table on tracks.
- Light switches of carved wood.
- A grand upper-floor balcony runs the length of the downstairs main room. The walls on the second floor are notably short. This architectural feature is theorized to have enhanced Gillette’s stature, making him appear taller to guests looking up at him from below.
- A hand-carved bar, which opened with a secret latch.
- A series of mirrors above the great hall allowed him to view visitors from his bedroom so that he could spy on guests and make dramatic entrances.
- Integrated into the home’s design, a fire suppression system with a water tower feeds a unique manual fire sprinkler on the second floor overlooking the living room.
- Secret doors, passageway, and room. A hidden door near the staircase leading to the rest of the home allowed Gillette to swiftly, unexpectedly, and theatrically appear to welcome or startle his guests. The secret room is only accessible by a staircase, revealed after pulling down a handle. The room is small and contains a fireplace.
- A grand wooden staircase to the upper floors.
- Tiffany lamps are made of broken bottle fragments.
- It also had a heated bed.
At one time, Gillette shared his home with up to 17 cats. For them, he designed finely crafted cat toys.
Gillette was particularly fond of his 3-mile-long narrow gauge railroad with an elaborate system of switches, trestles, bridges, turnouts, and a tunnel. Visitors could ride the railroad around the estate and speed along the 100-foot-plus cliffs of the Connecticut River. The railroad was complete with a steam engine and an electric engine that Lake Compounce later purchased in Bristol, Connecticut. The remaining tracks were pulled up, and the roadbed was converted into walking trails. The engines were donated to the park in 1992 and are now on display at the Visitors’ Center on the grounds. Gillette’s “Grand Central Station” train stop remains, along with a replica of a metal cat figure on its roof.
The grounds also contained a root cellar, walking paths with near-vertical steps, a two-story gable-ended vernacular dwelling for servants, a small period barn, stone-arch bridges, wooded trestles spanning up to 40 ft, and a fish pond.
To tour the castle, we had to buy tickets for a specific time slot at the visitor center. At the designated time, a ranger escorted us around the castle and demonstrated the various unique features of the house. It was both fascinating and stunning.
Comstock Covered Bridge
After we left the State Park, we continued north to Comstock Covered Bridge. The Comstock Comstock Covered Bridge is one of the three remaining covered bridges in Connecticut. It was built in 1785 as a simple, uncovered structure. In 1873, the bridge was covered, but the structure wasn’t engineered to support the weight until the 1930s when the CCC rehabilitated it. Both the bridge and the creek below it were beautiful.
Rich Farm Ice Cream Shop, Oxford, CT
We then decided to go to Rich Farm Ice Cream Shop on the dairy farm where the ice cream is made. Unlike the last dairy farm we visited, you could not smell the manure. When we pulled in, there were probably about 50 people in line, but the line went quickly. We each had a “small” two-scoop cup of ice cream, which might have been large at most places. The weather was in the high 70s, so we could eat them outside at one of their picnic tables without them melting too fast.
Friday, July 1
We took off with the camper around 9:30 and headed toward Plymouth, MA.