New Britain 4

New Britain's Iwo Jima MemorialOr Do You Know Where You Are?

Or even All Ashore That Is Going Ashore.

When we got up this morning our intention was to head south to Jersey to visit a cousin of Donna’s. That was if it was OK with her because we had already scheduled the visit for Thursday. By the time we bid “fare thee well” to the family and it was time to leave, the cousin couldn’t be reached. Being as we had the room here at the Farmington Inn for another night, we opted to tour a little of central CT. Used the web to look up where some waterfalls could be found and headed out.

Leaving town we passed a sign for the National Iwo Jima Memorial in New Britain/Newington. I have a photo of the monument in Arlington and every time we pass this one, it can be seen from Route 9, I think to myself, “I should stop and get a photo.” This morning I did.

We had directions to a couple of waterfalls in the south central part of the state with the first one being in East Hampton. Called The Cascades with a 20′ drop, the pictures made it look worth the trip. Reading the print directions, it seemed easy enough to find, but in real life proved elusive. We didn’t find Cox road where we expected it, so we turned on a different road to find our way back to a main road. What should we pass along the way but Cox Road. We turned onto it and seemed to be headed in the right direction, we crossed a listed road and Cox turned to dirt as advertised. About the time we got tired of bouncing on the dirt road and thought of turning around we came to the advertised fork in the road. There in the middle of the road were two fellows on off-road motorcycles. We stopped to ask where we were, but they beat us to the punch by asking first. They wanted to know if they went the way we came would take them to Portland. I answered yes, but wouldn’t dare try and direct them because of our round-a-bout way of getting here. They pointed to the fork of the road where we might find the waterfall, but had never seen it so couldn’t tell us how much further it might be. It was then that the 4 of us decided to return to where we did come from on the way we knew, the way we had come.

Our next destination was Chapman Falls in Millington, CT on the grounds of the Devil’s Hopyard State Park. Because the state park was on our Connecticut state map we had a high confidence level we cold find this one. As a bonus, our route would take us right by a covered bridge, Comstock Covered Bridge, one of five in the state and one we didn’t get a picture of in April. The bridge is not so historically picturesque because they have it supported by giant steel beams running longitudinally awaiting restoration. It looks like they have been waiting a long while because those steel beams are quite rusty. Chapman Falls turned out to be easy to find and easy to photograph. The roads surrounding the park are awesome. Lonely, narrow, tree lined and twisty they are perfect Miata roads. Hard to believe there is that much area of Connecticut that is still pristine and sparely populated.

When we left Devil’s Hopyard State Park and headed back we decided to take the Chester – Hadlyme Ferry across the Connecticut River. This small ferry, holding maybe 10 cars, and costing a whopping $3 is the second oldest continuously operating ferry in the state. As we approached the other side of the river Donna and I got back in the car and opened the CT map to decide how to get back to Farmington on the best 2 lane roads available. We both had our heads buried in the map when all of a sudden we heard, “All ashore that Is going ashore!” We had docked and the other three cars had long since departed. With a sheepish smile and a wave I started the car and drove off.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 251

New Britain 3

By a NoseOr 61,000 Carousel Horses.

Today we all piled into two cars and headed over a couple towns to Bristol and visited the Carousel Museum. I am not as big a fan of carousels as others in the group, but it was a very interesting couple hours, mostly due to our guide. She was only two years out of high school, but her knowledge and interest in the subject as well as a natural way with us, John Q. Public, made the subject almost exciting.

This evening Donna and I went over to catch up with a boyhood chum and his wife who we hadn’t seen in a while. We had a good time catching up on the events of the distant and recent past. Unfortunately a lot of the discussion centered around the foibles of our being upper middle-aged.

The Emperor clicked over to exactly 61,000 miles as I pulled into the hotel parking lot tonight.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 249

New Britain 2

Friendly'sThis is the 3rd memorial service in the last two months and I hope this doesn’t become a trend. First, in April, it was Donna’s Aunt Mary, then Jerry the Condo King in May and now my Mom’s in July.

Tonight’s for my mom was a nice little service and even though the minister had never met her he did a credible job. Mom was not real religious, but in the early years she would take us kids to Sunday school and church, but when we moved to the other side of town my dad wouldn’t drive us back over to the church on Sundays (Mom never got her license), so we just stopped going. I wonder how my life would have differed if my church going days hadn’t ended at the age of six?

After the service my brother had arranged a little gathering at the VFW hall with finger foods, etc for anyone who attended the service to go to. We went, ate a bit and chatted with my step dad’s kids, but most of the folks there were Paul’s friends or co-workers. We had a request for soul soothing ice cream from the family table, so Donna and I, younger sister Diane and her husband Allan and big sister Ginny headed to Friendly’s.

Top made an extra transition today because I washed the southern bugs off the nose in preperation for gathering some northern species of insects the next couple of days.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, down, up yet again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 245

New Britain

Monkey on a WireWashington DC to New Britain, CT. We were on the road by 8:00AM and leaving DC on the GW Parkway is a treat. Nice quiet tree lined road that I’m sure is busier at other times, but on Sunday morning is almost lonely. Traffic didn’t really pick up until we got into Delaware, by NJ it was massive. Ten lanes of Turnpike, five each direction, were filled with travelers. The Garden State Parkway was busy as well until we got north of Passaic. Fortunately there were no incidents or accidents to bring things to a standstill.

Once we were across the Tappan Zee Bridge we got off the highways and started driving the byways. But first we stopped in Tarrytown and got a slice of pizza. It was lunch time, but it didn’t matter we wanted some pizza, every time we come up here we try and eat pizza at least every three days, because to quote my sister, “The south may be friendly and have good BBQ, they don’t know pizza.” Fortunately for us pizza joints in the northeast are as prevalent as drive-thru espresso places in the northwest, i.e. on every corner.

No waterfall picture today. As a matter of fact I didn’t take a single picture, so for your enjoyment, here is one from yesterday’s visit to the National Zoo. They have set up some high lines between several points in the zoo and the orangutans have the freedom to roam them. Just don’t stand directly under the wires….

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 239

Washington DC 2

Lemur Island Today the three of us visited the National Zoo. It is just a $1.40 Metro ride from the station near our hotel/Sally’s apartment. We got there around 9:00AM and just walked right in. Cool, my (and your) tax dollars at work. Maps of the zoo are free, but there is a mandatory $1 donation. Stroller rental is free, but there is a mandatory $11 donation.

After three hours we had seen about 90% of the place and what was once cool and sparsely attended had became hot and crowded. Time to go. When we got off the train back in Rosslyn we had lunch at a Red, Hot and Blue BBQ place just up the street. The rest of the afternoon was spent at rest nursing the blisters on our feet. Because lunch was bigger than we expected, when the three of got together at Sally’s place for the evening meal it was just cheese, fruit and crackers.

Tomorrow it is off to Connecticut. My Mom’s Obituary was in today’s New Britain paper.

A couple of catch-up items from the trip that I forgot to blog about on their respective days:

1. Wednesday in Asheville After dinner we went to a Marble Slab Creamery for dessert. Whenever I get ice cream I always get some sort of coffee flavored dish. I also love malted milk balls, but when combined as ice cream and a mixin they subtract from each other’s deliciousness. Note to self, don’t do that again.
2. Thursday on the way to Salem The Emperor passed through the 60,000 mile mark.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 235

Washington DC

Wigwam FallsSalem, VA to Washington DC. Fifty miles on the Interstate, and then 60 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Then 100 miles on US 29 before finishing up on I-66. The last 30 miles into DC was very busy with two slow downs to crawl speed before we go onto city streets and started to hunt our hotel.

We checked in and called Sally. We met at her apartment where a plan was formulated: dinner and a jazz concert at the Capitol. We dined at the Asian Kitchen just around the corner. After a brief pit stop at our respective rooms for the proper shoes, we started to walk over to DC. Hey, the Capitol is just on the other side of the big pointy monument. It was a nice night for a walk and it was a good thing because by my rough measuring on a map it is about 5 miles from where we started. The concert start time was 8:00 PM and when we got close to the Capitol we didn’t here any music. When we finally made it at 8:30 we saw them taking down the signs announcing the event and loading them on a bus. They called it because it might rain. We took the Metro back.

Today’s waterfall, Wigwam, was a mere pup at 30′ compared to the past two days, but the walk to it was a piece of cake, about a hundred yards off the parkway.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 235

Salem

Cranberry FallsAsheville, NC to Salem, VA. We got up this morning and drove down the road a piece to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a little busy in the mornings. I think that is because Ashevllians use it to commute from the southwest side of town to the northeast, or vice versa, because there are no lights. So what if you can’t go 70 MPH like on I-240, there are no trucks or merging traffic every mile, just a tree lined, windy 45 MPH cruise.

We stopped at the Folk Life Center just outside of town to get a map of the Parkway, but we were way early because they didn’t open until 9:00AM. So we took a little stroll on a nature path. When that left us still 10 minutes until opening, we got in the car and left. Forty miles later we stopped at the Crabtree Meadows facility to get that map and a Coke. Turns out there is a trail right there for a short hike to the Crabtree Falls. It is a loop, with one segment to the falls listed at .9 miles and the other being 1.6 miles. What they don’t mention is that it is a half-mile to the beginning of the loop. We took the shorter path to the falls and boy was it interesting, steep, rocky, and full of roots and all downhill. The 70′ falls were definitely worth the walk though and seemed taller than yesterday’s 90′ Pearson’s Falls. We hiked back the long way and that is the way to do it, the trail was a whole lot less rocky and because it was longer, it was less steep.

When we got back to the car after our 3-1/2 mile hike, we looked at the clock, looked at the map and decided that our best option was to go get something to eat at the “Snack Bar” right there. The food wasn’t the greatest, but it was better than the other option, drive 20 miles further on the Parkway, get off and drive 20 miles to Morganton, VA. When we finally did get in the car to start moving again, Donna remarked that we had so far gone 40 miles in 4 hours. With still 200 to go to our destination, we had better get cracking.

The Blueridge Parkway is a beautiful drive and a national treasure, but you can’t be in a hurry. We drove another 65 miles before we couldn’t take the slow pace any more and exited at Deep Gap. Sixty miles of US and State highways lead us to I-81 for the last 70 miles to Salem, VA.

Salem was chosen, like Asheville last night, for the presence of a minor league baseball team and like last night, we didn’t attend the game. By the time we got to the hotel it was 6:00PM and with the game starting at 7 there was no way we could eat and make the start. Plus we were tuckered out from the long day in the car and the strenuous hike to the waterfall. Donna wanted seafood so we found a place not too far from the hotel called Awful Arthurs. It is a local 3-location chain and while the food was not actually awful it was certainly not worth the $40 it cost the two of us to eat there.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 233