Connecticut coast

After we left Cape Cod, we drove through Rhode Island, and tried not to blink! It is a very small state and nothing really to see there....so we kept on driving.

Now the coast of Connecticut is scenic. The trees are colorful, but still not at peak. We made several stops there along the Long Island Sound. The first was in Mystic, and its beautiful seaport and harbor. Your typical coastal town which depended on ship building and whaling in its earlier days. Some great, unique shops.

Next we stopped at Groton, a Naval Submarine Base. They have the world's first nuclear-powered submarine (which was commissioned in 1954), the USS Nautilus, docked there. We took a tour of the cramped living quarters, worse and much tighter then our RV, and visited the museum tracing the history and development of the US submarine force. The Nautilus was the first to go to the North Pole and the first to journey 20,000 leagues under the sea. It was very interesting (I even enjoyed it) and we both thought how much Ricardo (our grandson) would have enjoyed it, sorry he wasn't with us.

Then it was on to New Haven, home of Yale University with its Gothic revival architecture and medieval courtyards. They have graduated five presidents from here and many Supreme Court Justices and Senators. We were told a story about New Haven town green, the central square of the city where the locals would gather for meetings and business. It was such a special place that residents were requesting to be buried there and it began to turn the area into more of a morbid place (due to the headstones), so the city decided to move the graves to a nearby cemetery and return the town green into what is meant to be. But it appears New Haven did not have the money to do it and only moved the headstones...the bodies are still buried underground...and the green is said to be haunted.

New Haven invention claims: portable typewriter, sewing machine, ice-making machine, can opener, tape measure, pay phone, hamburger, lollipop, Frisbee, erector set, Polaroid camera, and color TV.

New Haven famous first: 1st public library, 1st planned city, 1st submarine launched, 1st US traitor (Benedict Arnold), 1st law school, 1st cotton gin, 1st American cookbook, 1st dictionary (Webster), 1st football game, 1st three-ring circus (PT Barnum), 1st women ever to be elected governor, and some others!