July 25, Phoenixville PA to Valley Forge PA, Hartford CT, Rocky Neck CT State Park, to Groton CT

Early up and over to Valley Forge National Military Park.  We were there before the park opened, so it was just us and the lawn maintenance crew.   A bit of shifting in the time and focus.  Here there were no battles, but it was the place where Washington and his troops wintered in the 3^rd year of the Revolutionary War.

Although there was no battle, 2000 men died in this area of cold, disease and starvation.  It was a turning point.  Where the rebels going to just quit and go home, or were they going to settle in, become professional soldiers and finish the job?

We got to see Washington’s Headquarters: The Pentagon of the time.  Also samples of the types of small huts that the soldiers who have slept in:  triple bunk beds in small, tiny rooms.  Again, we traveled back in our minds to that time.  It was more meaningful having just “heard” George Washington at Colonial Williamsburg.  Before the war, he was ready to retire as a farmer, but now, here he was.  We also read about how Martha would come each winter and join George helping out.

We decided to not wait around for the visitor’s center to open, but rather hit the road because we had some serious traveling to do today.  We drove through both Philadelphia during morning rush hour, and later over George Washington Bridge in New York City and got through the mass of traffic around New York right around noon.  Dick had done some great route planning, but we had crossed our fingers that there would be no big traffic snarls and there were none on the sides of the highways we were driving on.  Yah!

This put us on The Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, one of Dick’s most favorite roads to drive.  His family would drive this way when going to visit his grandparents who lived for many years in Higganum CT.  The road doesn’t allow trucks and has trees lining both sides as well as often growing on the medium strips.  There are also stone bridges that go over it.  Dick was thrilled that it is still as he remembers and relished this drive.

We stopped in Hartford to visit Mark Twain’s House and Museum.  Twain, after spending some time in California and in other travels, met a wealthy woman, Olivia, fell deeply in love and they married and settled down for quite some time in Hartford.  We took a lovely tour and got the chance to hear a lot about “Sam” as his family called him and his day-to-day life.  This was the home where he wrote Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and many of his most brilliant work.

One of the things that was very interesting was an exhibit at the museum that focused on the issues of race and racism.  Mark Twain made quite a journey in his person understanding of race, going from growing up in a family who had several slaves as a child, to marrying into a strongly abolitionist family who were friends with Frederick Douglas.  Much of his later writing and speaking was strongly anti-racist.  This exhibit showed many interesting things of his writing, as well as showing racist artifacts from various museums.  This was very well done.

We wish that we had had time to go visit the home of his neighbor, Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose book Uncle Tom’s Cabin had a role in exposing the evils of slavery to the larger world.  But no time this trip.

We drove a half hour down the road to Higganum, and got to see the grandparent’s house.  Dick recalled all of the trips there, eating out on the screened in back porch, running and playing with the kids in the neighborhood, he showed Patti the window of the bedroom where he always stopped.  As we were poking about, a car pulled up and someone down the street asked if everything was okay.  It turns out that she used to babysit in that house after the grandparents sold it, and he and Dick were able to reminisce about the town 50 years ago when he would visit.  THAT is small town life right there.

We also looked at the old Methodist church that the family sometimes visited, and Dick's dad sometimes preached at.

We stopped and picked up a light supper at Higgies, where the family always got ice cream and hot dogs.  They now serve frappes and lots of fancy seafood as well.  It was tasty.

Then we drove down to Rocky Neck State Park, the beach where they family would always go while in town.  It is still a family beach with lots of kids and families running around. 

 As we walked around, Dick remembered the sand bar a ways out, where you could swim to it and then stand up out in the water.  The water was calm, and you could see Long Island on the horizon from there.  There were many happy days spent at Rocky Neck.

13 miles down the road for our hotel for the night.  We both fell asleep early.  This vacationing is tiring.