Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Vacation to Newport, RI 06/14/12 - Part 1
What had originally been intended to be a simple Friday to Sunday vacation to Newport, RI morphed into a wonderful Wednesday to Sunday Great Explore Vacation through Old Saybrook, CT, Groton, CT, Mystic, CT, and Newport, RI.
We first had decided to take an extra day and leave Thursday and stay over in Mystic, CT so that Sue could see her daugher, Jill, who lives close by in Westerly, RI.
And then Sue spotted a room and show package special from the Mohegan Sun resort that the great band, Earth, Wind, and Fire was playing there Thursday night! I mean, how much better could it be than Earth, Wind, and Fire! Okay, so we then decided to leave on Wednesday and make the great tour of that section of the coast up to Newport, staying over Wednesday in Groton, CT and Thursday at Mohegan Sun.
And that's how our trip went from leaving on Friday to leaving on Wednesday!
06/14/11 Wednesday
Sue and I were out the door about 8:30am and heading for the McDonalds in Newington for coffee and something to eat to get us started for the day.
We were originally headed directly to Groton, CT, but somewhere along I395 Sue suggested that she'd really like to check Old Saybrook out. That had been our original destination for today during the trip's early planning stages, so off we went. However, somewhere before we hit the Rt. 3 Chelmsford, MA area traffic just came to a creep. Then it broke for a few minutes, then back to a creep. It did that a few times and we got hung up about 45 minutes because of it.
By the time we got to Old Saybrook we were starved. I spotted The Back Porch Restaurant and we had a great lunch there overlooking the Connecticut River.
But we wanted to see if we could find the old Catherine Hepburn estate, so we drove out all along the shore road looking for it. Time was moving on and after several false attempts, we just headed off along Rt 1 toward Groton, CT where we had a hotel room at the Quality Inn.
Before going to the hotel, we took a side trip over to the Submarine Force Library, Museum. I have always been fascinated with submarines, and this just made my head swirl. We were even able to go aboard the U.S.S. Nautilus, which was tied up at the pier. Heaven....
Then off to check in at the hotel. Sue had selected the Quality Inn because I was interested in their indoor pool. We dumped our bags and, after a little swim, we played backgammon until it was time to head out to dinner. We had decided to just keep it simple and close to the hotel. We ahd a couple of glasses of wine and a nice quiet dinner at a local 99 Restaurant.
Somewhere along the way in Old Saybrook.
A little misty while we were at the Submarine Force Museum. Check out the rings to the left; more on that later....
A cut-away view of a model sub.
Duck! Coming through one of the water tight doors in the Nautilus.
Sue looking for a cup of coffee from the chief in the ward room. Sue... it's a fake guy....
After the tour looking aft across the river.
A shot of the bow of the Nautilus where they constructed a hut where the tour starts.
So, here's those rings. The small ring represents the hull diameter of the first US sub, The Holland, whereas the big ring is the hull diameter of the U.S.S. Ohio. Wow! I just stood there in awe looking at them....
