Independence Day Tradition: Road Trip!

Every year, Jacob and I flex our spontaneity muscles and hit the road with only a direction in mind for the fourth of July.  This year I aimed the car in a north-westerly direction with no intention of leaving Connecticut, and we didn’t.

We drove up into the cool mountains of Connecticut, through an adorable little town called Riverton, and found an isolated state forest bearing the name “Enders” so we stopped for a fun photo.  When we saw people exiting the forest in bathing suits I knew we had to at least check it out.  We found a lovely little waterfall and Anna picked up lots of sticks, leaves, and rocks on our adventure.

After that we swooped east and ran into the airport.  Anna enjoyed coloring with the crayons provided at the restaurant before we headed off to the New England Air Museum.  They had an entire hangar filled with a B-29 Superfortress.  It was huge.  Anna had a great time running around.  Jacob and I tag teamed chasing her.  I was so impressed by the mechanism (“computer”) which adjusted the aim of the gunners to shoot where they were seeing even though they were feet from their weapons.  We saw many helicopters, and they let us sit in the cockpit of a Coast Guard craft.  I’m sure Anna would have loved to push every button and turn every dial in that cockpit, but we were too busy taking pictures.  Anna got pretty hot in there pretty quick, it must be hard to air condition 3 large air craft hangars.  So back to the road we headed, but not before grabbing a milkshake at the Dairy Cream.

Then we kept heading east, now on our way to Mystic.  We stopped by the Nathan Hale homestead but there wasn’t much to see and Anna was totally tuckered out so we kept trucking and both my fellow adventurers fell asleep.  We made it to Mystic and did a bit of walking around and shopping.  We had a tough time keeping Anna cool; it was so hot.  So after some chowder and barbecue for dinner we got back on the road.

Our last stop was at the New London mall.  The mall was closing right as we pulled up (at six o clock, what is this Montreal?).  But the anchors were still pedaling goods.  Jacob checked out the tools while Anna and I looked at clothes and by “Anna and I” I mean Anna.  She was wandering slowly, touching several articles on a rack as if checking their size or condition.  She must be a born shopper, although I honestly have no idea where she gets that from because I detest the mall.  She kept returning to a specific poodle purse, combining her two favorite things: stuffed animals and bags that carry her toys.

We got home before we even saw any fireworks, in fact the ones down the street started up right after we put Anna down for bed.  We have trees in just the right/wrong place because we couldn’t actually watch them from our house so it was indeed in remembrance of the revolution since it just sounded like bombs going off for a half an hour.  The good news is that Anna can sleep through just about anything!  But maybe that was just the exhausting day, even Jacob and I used a random number generator to pick who got to change her diaper, exhausting but amazing, as usual.