Last Full Day in Connecticut


   We got up about 7:30.  John seems to be feeling better, but the persistent cough still wakes him up several times a night.  We had breakfast and got ready to head into Mystic Seaport to spend the day.  We made the short 15 minute drive, parked, got our wrist bands, and off we went to explore.  It was so neat!  Everything from ship building to period houses, druggists, barrel makers, printers, and wood carvers.

 

These are flowers right inside the entrance.
I forgot to ask what they are, but they sure are beautiful!

 

 

This is the seed pod on the plant,

 

First stop... the ship yard.  They actively work on
 Anything from large sailboats...

 


...to medium sized motorboats.

This is called a "mishoon" canoe.  Enlarge the
picture below to see how it's made... very interesting! 

This is the saw used to "slice" pieces of wood to use
various places in the ships.

These slices are called "knee" pieces used in the front
of the ship to form the point.  All the side pieces are
run off of it.

  Two of my favorite places were the whaling museum and the carved masthead museum. The variety store was pretty neat, too.  I got my prize souvenir there...a prism that they put into the deck floor and hung down into the lower part of the ship.  The sun would shine through it and provide light.  One of the biggest attractions at the seaport is the Whaling Museum... it was phenomenal!!  We spent at least an hour in there.

This is a hairbrush made from the "baleen" out of the
mouth of the whale.  It is rigid but flexible.  They also
used it for "stays" in corsettes.

This is a scale model of Capt. Morgan's Whaling Ship.
I'll talk about it later.

I had to romp with the whale a bit.  In New England
they paint these instead of cows like in Lanc Co :)

  Then there's the Capt. Morgan Whaling ship. It is the only surviving original whaling ship in the world.  It was built in the 1800's and survived a hurricane and a fire.  It was completely refurbished and actually launched again last year...quite the labor of love for a lot of dedicated people!  

This is the 200+ year old Capt. Morgan

Imagine having to figure out which rope
to pull to raise and lower the sails!

This is the center and tallest mast.  It's quite
a ways up there!!!

Thought this was pretty neat.  The cabin is below.

This is a whaling boat that would have hung on the side
of the whaling ship.  The sailors would hop into
them armed with harpoons after spotting a whale.
They would hopefully kill the whale before the whale
Destroyed their boat and then pull the dead whale
Back to the ship to be skinned and cut up in pieces.
Blubber, baleen, jawbone and teeth were removed.
  Very little else was kept and the rest was thrown back into the ocean.
 

At about 2:00 John was pretty wiped out from the heat, so we went back to the little café we had stopped at right after entering the seaport to take a potty break, refill my soda and John's coffee (refills were free ALL day) and relax a bit in the AC.  John continued to rest there and I went to see the masthead museum.  

These Masthead replicas were very impressive!
  The smallest one was at least 5 feet tall!!
( the bird was about 3 ft tall but almost 5 ft long








With me being a music lover I found this pretty neat.
You'll have to enlarge it, of course, to read it!
These 2 pictures were from the Sailing Gallery
Right next to the Masthead Museum.




This is a scale model of a whaling ship, completely
made of metal and a MUSIC BOX!

 

 

We left about 2:30 and drove about 5 minutes over to Mystic to S and P Oyster Co., another recommendation from our friends, Chuck and Melissa.

  It was incredible!  John had clam chowder and I had lobster bisque.  John's clam chowder wasn't quite as goose as the one he had in Newport at "The Landing", but joy came close.  My lobster bisque was probably the best I've ever had although "The Cottage Café" in OC Maryland comes mighty close!  Then we shared seafood stuffed potato skins and they were probably the best thing I've EVER eaten... 5 of them, nice and crispy but not burnt and each one topped with a whole shrimp and small lobster claw, cheese and rémoulade sauce.  Oh Yum!!  Should have taken a picture!!  When we hot back to Harvey John took a nap and walked around the CG to take some pictures.

This is our site.

The laundry and bathhouse.

A pavilion with roll down sides!

Lots of room and mostly pull thru sites!

A laser tag area

9 hole mini golf

A fire pit with a bocce ball court in the background.

The pool

 

  I stopped at one of the coaches that was checking in yesterday when we were, because they had told us that they were headed to Lanc Co next.  We chatted for a while, until they were ready to eat supper.  Nice couple our age from Nashville, Tennessee!  On my way back to Harvey there was a coach that had just pulled in since we had gotten back from Mystic Seaport.  They were sitting outside with 2 dogs in a fenced in area.  One of them looked just like our dear departed Rat Terrier, Rossi, so, of course, I had to stop.  We chatted for a while and then John joined us.  Another nice couple our age from North Carolina.  We gave them one of our new "business cards".  Hopefully, they will contact us with their info also, like they said.  We went back to Harvey when the bugs started biting, took showers, and did some "cleaning up" to get ready for our trip home tomorrow.  It was truly a wonderful day!