We're Back on the Road to NC!

  OK, OK, I know I'm way behind with my blogging.  Give me a break... I'm out of practice!!
  Since our trip to Cape Cod we've been pretty busy!   We went to a Labor Day picnic up near Catawissa, moved Heather to York the same weekend, went to Knoebels Grove Amusement Park with the kids and grandkids, went to the Hershey RV show, and celebrated Bennett's 4th birthday.

Grandpa needed to fool around with the boys a bit
before riding the rides at Knoebels.

 

Cooper looks a little less comfortable
than Bennett, doesn't he?!?

 

We were all encouraging the boys to let go of the safety bar.

 

Bennett and Cooper loved driving the car!

 

Cooper in "the Red Baron" at Knoebels

 


Grandpa and Cooper playing in the playground
at Bennett's 4th birthday party in York.

 

The birthday boy sure liked Uncle Dustin's gift!

 

Bennett holding "the Incredible Hulk"...

 

...Bennett as "the Incredible Hulk"

 

He's getting ready to blow out the candles on his cake.

 

The "Bounce House" was a big hit!!

 

 
I went to OCMD with my Frogette friends for 8 days while John kept Kylie company at home.  While I was away he and Dustin's family visited with his Mom up in Mt Carmel, he visited his old work buddies twice in Mechanicsburg, and helped to build the new playground in Mt Joy 2 days.

The playground was destroyed by arson a few yrs ago.
The community got together to rebuild "Joyland" last week.

 

  

Here's proof he was really working!

Then it was time to pick up and pack up Harvey.  We had to keep in mind what we need not only for this trip to NC and GA, but also what we'll need for Florida in January, because we will be leaving Harvey in NC at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base at the end of October.  So it made packing just a bit more stressful.  We were on the road by 7:30 am and stopped for gas at Giant (we had $1.10 off per gallon).  We didn't hitch up the Jeep because Harvey's tires needed some air and it would just be a lot easier to pull into an air station without having the Jeep attached.  We stopped at Love's Truck Stop off of 283, got the air, and hitched up the Jeep.  Next stop...Virginia.  It was a nice day to travel because it was cloudy.  Too much sun coming thru the front window makes the dog hot.  We made our first stop about 2:30 off I-81 at exit 205 in Raphine, VA at a Wilco/Hess.  Harvey was thirsty and we were hungry!  There was a Wendy's there, so we grabbed burgers for us and the dog and then got back on the road.  When we got into NC it started to rain.  The farther we went, the harder it rained.  It was pretty nasty, but John did a great job, as usual!  We drove another 3 hours and stopped at a Home Depot off I-40 at exit 221 in Sanford, NC just to stretch our legs and let Kylie go potty.  Back on the road for the home stretch to the Cracker Barrel off Rte 70 near Raleigh where we will have dinner and spend the night in the parking lot.  We got there about 7:30, had dinner and then just relaxed for the rest of the evening.  I watched The Voice while John watched TV in the bedroom.  We were in bed by 10:30...we were both exhausted and so was Kylie.  She spent most of the trip on my lap, so neither one of us got to take a nap!

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!

Time to Roll On to Connecticut

 
We got up at about 8am, although John had been up several times before.  Mom called to see how John and I were doing.  We appreciated that very much!  I cooked some eggs and bacon and we were on the road by 10:00. 

This is the Battleship Massachusetts that sits in the
Taunton River on the Fall River side of the Braga bridge.
It was taken from the RV thru the screen... sorry!

We're not the only area with a nuclear power plant.
This one is in Somerset on the other side of the Braga bridge.

Our family doctor emailed us to let us know he would call in a script to our area for another antibiotic.  We found a CVS near our new CG, so we'll pick it up after we check in.  We arrived at Seaport RV Resort and CG (a Passport America resort) in Old Mystic, Connecticut at about 11:45.

The entrance to the CG was very appealing!

  Because check in was at 2:00, which John couldn't seem to find anywhere on line, we had to pay $20 for early check in.  There was no place at the entrance of the CG to park so we would have had to drive to the nearest Walmart and park.  We figured it would cost us just about that much in gas to drive there and keep the generator on for A/C for the dog, so we reluctantly paid it.  Lesson learned... call ahead to find out check in time if you don't know it.  We have never had a problem before at any CG being early.  Oh, well, like they say... there's always a first time.  It's a very nice park, well kept and large spaces, but John missed that there is no sewer.  No big deal... we're only staying 2 nights.  We went to the dump station and then  pulled into our site.  It was all grass and fairly level from front to back.  We just had to raise the left side.  We were set up by 1:00.  We had some lunch, talked with our daughter-in-law, Arlena, and then went to the pool.  The pool was small but very nice, and the water was perfect... not too cold, not too warm.

The bucket filling...

...the bucket dumping.  The lady from Idaho LOVED this!

  We talked with a couple from Idaho and they told us that on Tuesdays any one who camps here can get into Mystic Seaport for half price and then get the ticket validated so you can return for free for the next 7 days.  The regular price is $25 per person.  They close at 5:00 and it was now 4:30, so we high tailed it out of the pool, into the Jeep and off we went.  It was only about 10 minutes away so we got there in plenty of time!  So we are all set to spend the day there tomorrow.  Tonight we're going to go to Mystic Pizza, the restaurant that was the subject of the movie starring Julia Roberts.  I think it was her first film, but I'm not sure.  Well, we're back now and the pizza was really good!  It was a fun restaurant with movie and movie star memorabilia all over the walls.  And the movie, "Mystic Pizza" runs all the time.

It took a lot of self control to take this picture
before eating it.  Sausage and onion... delicious!!
We brought half of it home to enjoy again tomorrow.

  The whole downtown/Main St of Mystic is just lovely.  There were all kind of quaint little shops and eateries, and a drawbridge that opens quite frequently. 

This shop was particularly unique!

The open drawbridge in the background...

...and up close.



It goes down amazingly fast...




...maybe because of these HUGE cement weights!

By recommendation of Bonnie and Ken's friends, Melissa and Chuck, we got ice cream at Mystic  Drawbridge Ice Cream.  I had Mystic Mud-choc ice cream with choc chunks, brownie chunks, fudge, and candy, although I couldn't figure out the "candy" part.  John had blueberry.

  They were both delicious!  Then we checked out some more of the shops. 

This shop's owners must be dog lovers because they
have water dishes out for hot furry friends.

Cooper called while we were looking around.  Talked with Heather, too.  It was such a beautiful evening I could have walked around there all night long.  But we came back to the CG about 8:30.  John had a headache as he continues to cough so he went in to bed to watch TV.  I worked on my blog from the dining table while I watched Am Got Talent.  There are so many great acts I have no idea who is going to get voted off!  John went to bed at 10:30 and I turned in at 11:00. Tomorrow morning we be off to Mystic Seaport.