Candi's Corner: Wanderlust and Passions

I thought that I would kind of start back blogging about my life before Spokane. We have spent a month between Eagle, CO and Houston, TX visiting my in-laws. But before that we lived in New Haven, CT for 10 weeks. Now, that was fun!

It was my first time in New England, the closest I've been was to NYC. Both me and Bill were very excited about spending the last part of summer, early fall in New England, and we knew 10 weeks was too little to go everywhere we wanted to visit, so we kind of had to consolidate plans.

Our first day trip was to Mystic. We spent most of the day in Mystic Seaport, where we saw many old ships including the last wooden whaleship in the world;Charles W Morgan. We also watched a demonstration of whaling, from lowering the boat from the big ship to actually pretending to catch a whale, processing it and then taking it back to the ship. Man, did they work hard on that, here is a photo.

From the seaport, we took a taxi boat to downtown mystic, where an art festival was taking place. Lots of beautiful art by New England locals,and good street food, I just had to have a hot dog!
Of course, we could not leave Mystic without stopping at Mystic pizza,where Julia Roberts worked as a waitress in the movie Mystic pizza . That place was crowded!

Before heading back to New Haven, we stopped at the aquarium for a quick visit.

This was our first day trip while in New Haven, more to follow.

Another day trip we took while living in New Haven was to Newport,RI. It was a nice two hour drive to get to Newport. There are so many mansions in Newport, but since we only had one day, we wanted to only visit one of the mansions, based on research and recommendations we visited The Breakers.

The Breakers was the summer house for the Vanderbilt family. Well, it is a huge Italian Renaissance- style summer house, built for a family of seven children. The tour offered was a nice overview of the history of the mansion and the Vanderbilts. The Breakers has nice views of the ocean and overlooks beautiful walking trail :The Cliff walk
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The cliff walk is a 3.5 mile walk, mostly easy, and offers beautiful views of the ocean, Newport Beach and historic buildings. We enjoyed the walk a lot.

After our walk, we drove to town and had lunch at Jack and Josie's Cafe . After that, we spent an hour or two, in Newport Harbor, watching people and ships.I really like to watch people, it always amazes me to watch peoples' reactions to different things. It was a beautiful day in August, I could have spent the whole day sitting on the grass watching people and ships, but we had to go home.

Before we left Newport, we did a ten mile ocean drive , that was just absolutely gorgeous. Many people were on bikes or scooters, few were on foot. I kind of wished we could have rented these three wheel scooters,but they were all rented out by then.

Our day trip to Newport was a lot of fun, we definitely would like to go back and visit more mansions,do the cliff walk and ocean drive again, maybe with scooters next time.

More trips in New England to come.

We had a four-day weekend over labor day holiday,so we decided to take a trip to Maine. It was not exactly slow travel, it was more of a fast discovery road trip. Like I said before, I've never been to Maine, but Bill lived in Boston for about a year during high school, during which he took a family trip or two to Boothbay Harbor.

We left Friday after work heading from New Haven to Portland, Maine, about three and a half hour drive. We had a lovely lobster roll dinner at Portland Lobster Companya waterfront restaurant, walked around the the Old Port, and went to bed early.

The second day, we took coastal route one out of Portland stopping at Maine coastal cities with a final destination of Bar Harbor; Acadia National Park. Our first stop was Freeport, with the goal of visiting L.L Bean ,which was much bigger than I thought it would be. Driving along route one, our second stop was Boothbay Harbor, an extremely beautiful town, with lots of places to eat and shop. We also stopped at Rockport and Camden, before reaching Bar Harbor.

Bar Harbor is such a beautiful coastal town,that was very very crowded for the holiday weekend. We checked in at the Acadia Inn , which is a clean hotel where the Island Explorer stops for pick up and delivery around Bar Harbor and Acadia. We did not need to use our car there, as we just took the shuttle to town and the park.

Our main interest in Bar Harbor was Acadia National Park, so the next morning we took the shuttle to town, rented couple bicycles at Acadia Bike , took the shuttle again with our bikes to the Park. There are many miles of carriage roads in Acadia National, these roads are perfect for biking, and offer such beautiful scenes. we biked most of the day,well until I could not bike anymore.

We had a lobster dinner that evening at one of the waterfront restaurants that I can't remember what it was called. We took a stroll down Shore Path , just going ooh and aah over the beauty of it, then hit the road back to South Portland where we stayed at Wyndham for our last night in Maine.

From South Portland, we again took the coastal route heading back to New Haven, stopping at southern coastal towns of Cape Elizabeth, Kennebunkport,Ogunquit, and York. We pretty much went lighthouse hunting. The most memorable, and I think it is the most photographed lighthouse we saw was Cape Neddick, also known as Nubble light in York.

We loved our trip to Maine, and wished we had more time to spend there. We will definitely love to go back to visit all again really, but especially to spend more time in Acadia.

The last weekend trip we took while living in New Haven,CT was a hiking trip to the beautiful state of New Hampshire.

After a lot of research on hiking the White Mountains in NH, we decided on hiking Franconia Ridge Loop, a classic nine mile loop hike.

The trailhead is in Franconia Notch State Park, in Lincoln, NH. We stayed at the Colonel Spencer Inn , a very old and charming B & B, that is run by very nice couple who happen to be great cooks too. We had homemade Peach French Toast, homemade blueberry muffins and fruits. A very delicious breakfast.

We got to the trailhead at about 0830 am, and we started the loop by ascending Old Bridle Path.After four miles of steep hiking, we reached the summit of Mount Lafayette, the sixth highest peak in New Hampshire at 5260 feet. The views were absolutely spectacular. After hiking another mile, the trail crests Mount Lincoln at 5,089 feet. A little more hiking we got to the summit of Little Haystack.

From Little Haystack, our descending journey began. It was much steeper than we had expected, and a good part of it was nearly straight descending. Once we got to Falling Water trail, we started seeing some Waterfalls and brooks. It was absolutely beautiful, and we enjoyed it despite the aching legs.

It took us about eight hours before we were back in the car heading to town for pizza. It was a long day, full of excitement and fun. We would love to go back.