This is one of those events we like to do every year but consistently screw up the schedule. We have good intentions, but somewhere along the lines, we miss what we are looking for. At times, we have been pleasantly surprised by some available “pick your own” crop and went about our day full of smiles. Well, I think I have fixed the whole scheduling problem.

A few weeks ago, Laura printed out the berry, apple and pumpkin schedule from Rose’s website. The schedule is accurate for basically any pick your own farm around here. Also, after we go picking, I put the event on my Outlook calendar and make it yearly recurring. That way, we won’t miss it next year.

Anyway, the day went well. Rose’s is a pretty enormous farm. It was much bigger than I expected and we actually needed to get a ride in a truck to go out to the strawberry and raspberry fields. I liked the truck ride. Wait until you see the photos below to see what kind of truck it was.

The strawberries were very tasty, but picked over a little bit. We are pretty late in the season for them and unfortunately, many other people got there before us. We did manage to get a bunch of nice ones though. The raspberries were in plentiful supply. I ate a whole bunch of them while picking. There really are only so many you can eat while on the job, but I did my fair share.

Next up is blueberries in early July. Rose’s has tons of blueberry bushes full of blueberries, but I think we are going to try out a different farm in the area, just to see what they are like. It’s nice to experience some variety.

Here are those pics…

Related posts

• The “BC” Button – 2008 BMW X5 3.0si (1)
• My Morning Walk To The Mailbox (4)
• Autumn In Glastonbury, CT (0)
• Facebook, Google Android, Tidal Power, Search and the Moon (0)
• Samuel Adams Winter Classic (0)

The other night, after our walk, Laura and I decided to get in the car and drive to the next town over to see if there were any obvious ice cream places. If there were, we were going to pull over to eat some. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. It’s odd, there’s a nice lake and a little bit of a vibe. Strange that there’s no ice cream places.

A few hours later, I decided to hop online and look for a famous ice cream place I heard about at Uconn. I didn’t know the name of it, but after a while, I found the one that my friend had told me about. It’s called the “Uconn Dairy Bar.”

Uconn has a big agricultural school and I guess part of that school is making superb ice cream for their students to enjoy. Well, not just their students…people from all over.

Now, you know that once I found the ice cream place over at Uconn, I put a little visit to just that spot on my agenda. We went over yesterday and enjoyed some ice cream. Laura got the pistachio and I got half vanilla and half strawberry. It was pretty damn good.

Hey look, I even took some pictures for you.

Related posts

• The Funniest Thing That Happened in my Life – #2 (8)
• Strawberry And Raspberry Picking At Rose’s Berry Farm In Glastonbury, CT (0)
• Mashamoquet Brook State Park in Pomfret, CT (0)
• Social Websites Harm Children’s Brains? (0)
• New King Size Kingsdown Sleep To Live Mattress Set (19)

As we continued our walk, I kept telling her how I just wanted to walk up and down a beach for a good long time and how good of exercise I though that would be. She seemed to agree, once I mentioned the sport of it. If it’s just a regular walk, it’s no good. If there’s something in it for us, I guess so.

I kept on talking about different places and their benefits when I turned to her and said, “I think I just need a vacation.” I instantly thought of Turks and Caicos. For those of you who have never heard of that, Turks and Caicos is a small cluster of islands in the Caribbean. They aren’t all smothered with resorts and hotels yet, that’s why you may not recognize the name. I have been thinking about visiting Turks and Caicos for years.

When we got back to the house, I let Laura loose on the computer. I told her to feel free to find a nice vacation for us. She came back with some options, but nothing really floored me because there weren’t many “all inclusive” options on those islands. Thinking back to Punta Cana, all there was were all inclusive resorts. The biggest resort on Turks and Caicos is Beaches Resort, and it’s all inclusive. It looks great, but it may be a little too “family friendly.” Much (or all) of their marketing is geared towards kids. I’m talking Sesame Street stuff. Although, they do have those big floating tricycles and a water park. Hmmm.

Anyway, for the past few nights, I have been trying to locate an all inclusive resort on a nice beachy island. I want some place that’s not overbuilt and preferably with white sand beaches. I want to walk out into the water really really far, so the shallower and bluer the better. I am getting a little depressed as the search goes on, because there is so much to look through and all the islands have so much to offer. Punta Cana was easy…all the resorts were all inclusive and the beaches were awesome. There was nothing to think about. Fly down, get on a bus to the resort and get drunk. Now, that’s what I’m talking about.

Okay, I’ll get to the point of this post. During my search for the ultimate Caribbean island, I have browsed through many pictures and videos. Just a few minuted ago, I came across a rather unique video offered by Best Destination Travel TV. As I watched it, I started thinking about how well the commercial (or whatever you want to call it) was written and though out. I just had to share it with you. Take a look at it and let me know what you think.

Pretty good huh? Ahh, the search goes on.

Related posts

• Wind Farms, Global Warming, Geothermal Energy and Seawater (0)
• The Health Benefits Of Black Currant (0)
• The Animals of Punta Cana (1)
• Punta Cana at Night – Taking Photos (1)
• Shopping in Punta Cana (0)

On our way to the restaurant, we passed a little sign that said something like “State Park Campgrounds.” My parents have a long history of camping, so they really wanted to pull in to see what was going on. I was driving down a kind of busy road, so when we saw the next sign that said, “Mashamoquet Brook State Park Entrance,” they were only too happy to pull in there. I am glad we did, because we discovered a neat new state park with an awesome trail system. There are rivers and lakes and trails all over the place. We have to add this park on our growing list of great Connecticut state parks to hike in.

I took some photos for you to browse through.

Related posts

• Somerset Square in Glastonbury, CT (2)
• A Winter Walk In The Woods (1)
• Devil’s Hopyard State Park – East Haddam (1)
• Mayflower Inn It Is – Christmas Dinner (3)
• Visiting Stonington, CT (1)

A few months ago, when my mother and I agreed on this trip, I had a whole itinerary planned out. We were going to go here and we were going to go there. Then, Laura and I went on that little trip to Stonington. It was during that trip that I remembered that I really don’t enjoy driving as much as I used to. I mean, short trips here and there are okay, but the long ones I can do without. Remembering this, I started planning to visit places that were just a tad bit closer than the ones I had previously planned to visit.

On Thursday, we all hopped in the car and drove up to the Red Lion Inn, in Stockbridge, MA. You all know that Laura and I have been there a lot, but my parents never have. I thought I would spare you the photos, since you have seen a million of them already. We had a nice lunch and I even let my father beat me at a game of chess.

On Friday, we had a great time up at the Sharpe Hill Vineyard in Pomfret, CT. None of us had been there before, so we really didn’t know what to expect. Luckily, we were all very pleasantly surprised. I think I heard the phrase, “You know, we could be in Italy right now and you wouldn’t know the difference” more than once.

For those of you who don’t know, Pomfret is up in the “Quiet Corner” of Connecticut. It’s a really cool place that brings you back to the good ol’ days. It’s peaceful, beautiful and best of all, nobody from Hartford tailgates you all the way down the road. Wow.

The Sharpe Hill Vineyard offers two different tastings; they differ based on amount of wine consumed. The first tasting costs $5 and you get to taste five types of wines. Actually, you can taste five of the same wines. They don’t mind. The second tasting offers eleven types of wines for $10. We chose the $5 one because I didn’t want to get tipsy in the middle of the day. Neither did anyone else. We were all very happy with our five choices.

I took a whole bunch of photos, so you can see what the vineyard looks like. It’s really nice and they even had a restaurant. Unfortunately, we were unable to eat there because reservations are taken three weeks ahead of time. Maybe Laura and I will have to make reservations to check out the food.

Here are the photos:

Related posts

• Wal-Mart Vs. Whole Foods (3)
• Now This is Living (2)
• What’s The Average Temperature For My Town? (0)
• Average Snowfall By Area (0)
• Hiking At Devil’s Hopyard State Park in East Haddam, CT (0)

Lately, I have been wandering around Google Earth checking out the Connecticut shoreline. It’s amazing how much neat stuff is around there. I really never knew that, but then again, how would an out-of-stater know about all of the hidden gems in another state. Right now, the Connecticut”ites” are saying, “Yeah right…hidden.”

There are so many neat little fishing/boat towns in this state. Stonington is definitely one of them. It kind of reminded me of Newport, RI and Salem, MA. There were lots of old houses, boats and some pretty cool streets. I took a whole lot of pictures so you can get a feel of what I am talking about.

Related posts

• Panda House in Danbury, CT (1)
• Halloween in Salem, MA (1)
• I Joined The Glastonbury Tennis Club (0)
• Hot Tips For Buying The Perfect Boat (0)
• Mayflower Inn It Is – Christmas Dinner (3)

We had to run down to Norwich for a little while, so the park wasn’t that far away. I even went as far as stopping off to get some Subway sandwiches. Boy, they really don’t taste that much different from when I used to eat them every day for lunch.

We didn’t do all that much at the park. We hiked down past the waterfall and then stopped off at the picnic area to eat our sandwiches. After that, we walked down to my favorite part of the park, next to the river. There is this area that is just chock full of Hemlock trees and moss that is really cool looking. Since I already exhausted every photo-op in this particular park, I decided to mix things up a little and take some photos of the river.

Related posts

• Raccoons In The Attic (4)
• Removing the Bathroom Floor (3)
• Honeywell HWM-450 4 Gallon Humidifier For Dry Winter Air (4)
• Kayaking at Bull’s Bridge, Housatonic River, Kent, CT (0)
• Going For A Nice Long Walk (0)

Laura’s sister and her man are in the area for about a week, so we all thought it would be nice to meet up and have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in West Hartford. We have never been to this particular restaurant location before, but we knew damn well that the Cheesecake Factory is an awesome place for lunch or dinner.

I didn’t know where I was going, but Laura put the restaurant address in the GPS and off we were. We took the same route we drove on when we visited this area a few years back. When we arrived, we were kind of shocked at all the construction that occurred since the last time we were there. Apparently, someone put up a new little mini-town in West Hartford when we weren’t looking. It’s called Blue Back Square.

I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty cool. The area has been open for about a year and is full of restaurants, stores and even apartments. I took a few photos for you.

Related posts

• Stihl BR 550 Backpack Blower (1)
• Christmas Dinner At The Mayflower Inn (2)
• The Real 2008 BMW X5 (5)
• Red Lion Inn Review – Thanksgiving 2008 (5)
• Welcome Later Sunsets (0)

While driving down 91 south, towards Hartford (in the HOV lane – luckily) today, we saw some signs lit up warning us of an accident further south, near Interstate 84. I didn’t really think anything of it, because the signs actually said the accident was on 84 west, not 91. When we rounded a bend in the highway, I asked Laura if she saw smoke. She said yes and this is what we saw when we were forced to stop by a police officer.

It wasn’t bad until the fire department started spraying the car. When they did that, the smoke got all white and came near us. I turned off the car vent, but some smoke still got in to give me a headache. Burning rubber and plastic really smells.

While I was sitting there taking pictures, I noticed the guy in back of us doing the same thing. It was a race to get back to see who could post it on their blog faster.

Here is a short video too.

Related posts

• Welcome Later Sunsets (0)
• Buying And Selling Cars with Ease (0)
• Flower Identification (1)
• Costco Wholesale in Enfield, CT (0)
• Reese Towpower Trailer Hitch (0)

On the way up, I told Laura that I was going to get gas before we went in, because after we do our shopping, I am in no mood to get gas. Luckily, today the weather was beautiful and getting out of the car to pump the fuel turned out to be fun…as the following picture shows.

Jay at Costco gas pump

I think Laura described me as “herbolicious.”

Half way through pumping the gas, I noticed the “Members Only” sign and just had to get a picture of it. Remember those “Members Only” jackets? How cool were they? Not really, I guess. Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary to have my picture taken next to the members only sign.

Also, if you notice, the gas is $2.06. That’s a far cry from the $2.49 I payed at a local station last week. Go Costco.

Related posts

• Calling the Car Dealer (0)
• The Elusive Goal Of Freedom (3)
• Visiting Stonington, CT (1)
• The World Of Restaurant Ratings (0)
• Mayflower Inn It Is – Christmas Dinner (3)