pntaylor1997

6/5/21

We traveled today to Niantic, CT and we are staying at the Niantic KOA. This is a nice park and the sites are long enough for us to park the truck behind the rig.

The traffic here is something else! The 95 is a toll road and it’s not a bad road, but it’s only two lanes, so it’s bumper to bumper for miles and miles. Sad thing is that there is absolutely no place that can be widened, civilization has built right up to the roads. It’s a problem every city is facing though!

6/6/21

Today we drove up to Essex, CT to catch a ride on the Essex Steam Train. This is a real steam train with a guy shoveling coal into the engine just like back in the day.

We opted for first class seating which gave us comfortable easy chairs that swiveled so that we could turn to look out the window, or to the right or left to talk to our neighbors, we even had our own Porter who was happy to serve us whatever we wanted to drink.

The train followed the Connecticut River to Deep River Landing, about 8 miles, but it took about ½ hour to travel. At Deep River we boarded the riverboat and went up river about 4.5 miles, then turned around and headed back to Deep River to get back onboard the train. We had packed our own lunch and ate that on the boat. We are still caught in the extreme heat wave the mid Atlantic States are getting hit with. Temps are still in the high 80’s during the day.

The boat took us past lots of big houses with views of the river. Up on a hill overlooking the river is Gillett Castle, built by an actor from the 40’s (?) who had it built to look like an old stone castle that he had seen on his travels, complete with missing walls.