The weather so far has been pretty good after the two days of rain that welcomed us. Blue skies and temperatures in the low 80’s (27C). Today we decided to head south to a small town Lyn remembered from her days of working in the States…. Mystic Seaport. This is a small reconstructed working seaside village on the coast of Connecticut.
The GPS took us on yet another root out of the campground, and once again we saw more of the damage caused by the tornado. I find it amazing that there is such a well defined path of almost total destruction, then within yards either side of that path there is no visible damage.
About 6 miles into the journey we crossed the State line into Connecticut, a new State for me and former home State for Lyn. The scenery remained fantastic, rolling hills climbing up about 700ft, and densely wooded. After about 90 minutes we arrived at Mystic Seaport, the name comes from the fact that the village is located at the mouth of the Mystic River.
The village has a number of working stores and workshops, one of the projects they are working on is restoring a 19th century wooden whaling boat to seaworthy condition to be launched in 2014. There was also a number of “tall ships” moored around the village, one being the Joseph Conrad, a training ship launched in Denmark in 1882
Training Ship Joseph Conrad
There was also a coal fired steam boat giving cruises along the river front. There were a number of the buildings in the village that had “workers” present who were all willing to describe life as it was a couple of hundred years ago. Some of the buildings were the cable store where they had all the machinery for making the old hemp ropes, there was a candle factory, a coopers store where they showed how the old wooden barrels were made, a print shop with a variety of presses plus a multitude of houses and stores that had been restored.
We planned on doing a number of other things whilst in the area, but were so impressed with this place we ran out of time. We did however manage to sneak in a trip to the coast which provided a welcome break from the heat. At the point of the coast we went to 3 States met just off shore, NY, RI,CT.
A great day out.