My lady and I have a nice little tradition going. We’ve been doing it for a few years now and it really seems to be working out rather well.
What’s the tradition? Well, it’s basically avoiding the world during the holidays and spending time with each other over a nice dinner. We’ve found some great restaurants by doing this. I hope the trend continues.
I bet people think we’re nuts. “What? How in the world can you not be with your loving family during these special times? Are you crazy?“ To that I say please stop asking me those kinds of questions. I like to think that our families are secure enough to know we love them. I mean, we talk enough. Like three times a week enough. Any more of me and they might specifically ask me to stay away.
Do you know what else we do? We don’t exchange gifts. Oh here we go again…I know, I know. “Why sir, do you not exchange gifts?” I’ll tell you why. Because I don’t need anything and neither does anyone else. Really. When my friends and I talk about this, we all usually end up in agreement. My sister and I were laughing about all the garbage people get each other during the holidays and she said something really funny. She said, “Do you know what I really want for Christmas? A house.” That pushed me off the deep end. I started laughing and replied, “Yeah, how about someone paying the electric bill or stopping by to shovel the driveway.” I mean really, I don’t think anyone needs more stuff to sit on a shelf somewhere for a year before it hits the garbage. Every time I head North on 91 past Hartford and look at that huge mound of dirt I feel horrible.
I know, I’m a Grinch.
But I’m not a Grinch when we’re eating mighty good food down at the Saybrook Point Inn in Old Saybrook, CT. As I mentioned in my post about our Thanksgiving dinner, I am diggin’ the buffet idea. All you can eat and the food is awesome.
It’s weird, whenever I think of the word “buffet,” I think of bad food in Vegas. Then I have to remember that when you go to a buffet style dinner in a real restaurant, there are real chefs making the food. From what I have experienced this year, it’s really really good.
The Saybrook Point Inn pleasantly surprised me. I just couldn’t believe how good the food was. I can still remember what I ate. Man…and the desserts. Holy mother. I ate this mousse cake that I had to hold myself back from. Oh yeah, the restaurant is nice too…but the food!
Okay, enough about the great dinner that I ate multiple plates of. Enough about that. We did other stuff too.
After dinner, I drove around a bit. My better half wanted to go back to the Old Saybrook town beach to collect some shells. Her collection is growing. Of course, I drove her there. I kept telling her that I always wanted to visit a beach with snow on it. I thought it would be cool and it was. Oh yeah…she got her shells.
Before we visited the beach though, I thought it would be fun to check out this one neighborhood that we passed the last time we were in the area. The area is called “Fenwick” I think. That’s what Google Earth is telling me. It’s sort of like a peninsula with a golf course on it as well as a bunch of really nice houses. This is the type of thing that gets my attention.
During our little tour of the area, we passed by the beach, the Lynde Point Lighthouse and some Monk Parakeets. Monk Parakeets? That’s right. Our jaws dropped when we saw about five bright green birds sitting on the branches of the tree that held their nests. It was so strange because I thought these types of birds only lived in the Amazon. Apparently not. They also live in Connecticut. You should have seen me fiddling around trying to get my camera out of the bag.
So there you have it. Our very simple Christmas of 2009. Just the way I like it.
Saybrook Point Inn sign
Docks at Saybrook Point Inn
Looking East from the Saybrook Point Inn toward Great Island
Looking North from the Saybrook Point Inn up the Connecticut River
The other day was kind of rough. I spent a good amount of time on the internet getting phone numbers for “Pick Your Own” farms around the state and calling them. I was disappointed because so many of them didn’t have anything to pick. Many of the crops are running late because of the lousy weather we had in June. The local farms around here are booming, but the ones up North aren’t on schedule.
Since we wanted to just get out there, we decided to hop in the car for a cruise around some roads we have never been on. I had an idea, so off we went.
For the past year, I have been driving by a sign that says something like, “Connecticut Wine Tour” and never gave it much thought. I figured that since this sign would probably bring us somewhere neat, we would follow it.
Okay, so we jumped in the car and started driving. It was more of a sight seeing tour than anything else. We first passed the Easter Seals at Camp Hemlocks and did a quick drive through. Camp Hemlocks is “…the place where people of all ages with various disabilities, realize their dreams and strive to reach their highest potential.” It’s a pretty neat place. I liked the fact that they have a small lake that people can canoe and kayak on. We just drove through and left.
Onward and upward. Next, we came across the winery that I guess those wine tour signs were talking about. It’s called, “Priam Vineyard.” We drove up the driveway to find some growing grapes and a nice wine tasting building. I really wanted to go in, but didn’t have any cash on me. I looked at Laura and told her that we will put this one on the list to come back to…perhaps on the weekend. Oh, the disappointment. We drove back down the driveway and left.
We made a right out of the road and drove for only a mile or so and saw a sign for “Day Pond State Park in Colchester.” We decided to pull in the entrance to do a quick drive through. I have actually seen this park’s description a few times while looking for various state parks last Summer. I kind of always passed it by because I thought they just had a pond and that’s it. Honestly, I didn’t do too much digging into its writeup. Well, the park has more than a pond. There are some hiking trails as well. I wouldn’t say the trail system is more extensive than Gay City State Park, but they go for quite a distance. Of course, I may be wrong because I only gave the trail map a quick glance. Are you seeing a trend here?
We stopped the car and walked around for a few minutes and decided to continue on with our driving tour. I did have a lot of fun driving on the dirt road with the car. I am always trying to see how it handles in different environments.
After that, we pretty much thought the major sights were covered. We were driving down the road, heading back to where we came from when I saw a sign for “Salmon River – Connecticut State Forest.” Now, this was interesting. I was curious what the difference between and state park and a state forest was, so we pulled in. As far as I can tell, there isn’t much of a difference. We saw parking areas, picnic tables, walking trails…all the usual stuff.
Since I wanted to go for a walk and actually achieve something for the day, we found a parking spot and hopped out of the car. We walked towards the river and that is where the picture taking began.
There is a pretty neat trail that takes you down the river quite a bit. Along the way, we saw burned out camp fires, so there may be camping at this place, although we didn’t see any signs for camping. The sign out front also said the park, or “forest” closed at dusk. Hmmm. We walked a pretty good distance and then turned back.
Upon returning to the house, I did a little research on Google Earth to discover that this Salmon River runs all the way down to the Connecticut River. I think it would be pretty cool to tube down it. Getting back up would be an issue though.
Okay, let’s see some photos.
Salmon River State Forest picnic area
Salmon River State Forest picnic area – looking towards the river
Salmon River State Forest running water
Salmon River State Forest – Salmon River looking South
Salmon River State Forest – Salmon River looking North
Salmon River State Forest – large lawn with White Pines
Small river leading into the Salmon River
Attention anglers sign – The difference between Salmon and Trout
Looking into the clear water of the Salmon River
Salmon River – A Connecticut State Forest sign out near the road
Since it was a bit cooler yesterday and the sun was shining, we decided that it was a great day to hop in the car and take a trip down to Stonington, CT.
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.
Stonington Point looking at Stonington Breakwater and Mystic
Stonington Point looking at scuba divers
Stonington Point looking at Sandy Point
Stonington Point looking at Sandy Point and Napatree Point
Sea Gull at DuBois Beach
DuBois Beach sign
Stonington Lighthouse – Stonington Borough
Old Lighthouse Museum sign
Lily of the valley garden with wrought iron fence
Lily of the valley garden with wrought iron fence – view from sidewalk
Grape Hyacinth in front of stone steps
Nice lawn looking towards Lords Point
Rear of Stonington Harbor Yacht Club parking looking towards Lords Point
Defenders of Stonington sign
Rear of Stonging Yacht Club parking looking down Trumbull Street
Purple Hyacinth in mulch near steps
Stonington Yacht Club sign
The Inn at Stonington sign – Water Street
Looking North on Water Street, Stonington, CT
Looking South on Water Street, Stonington, CT – View 1
Looking South on Water Street, Stonington, CT – View 2
Looking South on Water Street, Stonington, CT – View 3
Hungry Palette Screened Fabrics sign
Pink Tulips in garden on Water Street, Stonington, CT
If you don’t already know this about me, I’m a satellite image junkie. I used to be hooked on Google Maps and then graduated to Google Earth. One day, my mother introduced me to Live Maps and it was all over. The bird’s eye view is killer. It’s like you are sitting in a helicopter at about 1,000 feet looking around.
The reason I like these types of applications so much is that I have a horrible memory for places. I constantly think of stuff I have seen and then want to see it again. If we had transporters like they have on Star Trek, I would be everywhere all the time.
Live Maps is okay, but sometimes it runs slowly and takes a few moments for the photos to load. That bugs me. Also, the bird’s eye view isn’t available for every place I want to look. I mean, it’s really great exploring through Live Maps, but I need more.
This evening, I was thinking about various places I used to visit in Atlanta, GA. I was thinking about all the roads and different stores and restaurants. I think I have a more romantic view about what there was down there than what was reality. I went over to YouTube to see if I could find some videos of the stuff I was thinking about and only came across a few not-so-great videos. I was a little disappointed when a thought popped in my head. I said, “Hey man, why not download Google Earth again? I know they updated it and now offer Street View.” How great of an idea that was.
Well folks, I downloaded Google Earth and I have to say that my socks were knocked off. The last time I checked this program out is when they were just introducing 3D maps. Now, they have 3D, Street View and somehow, I can see what’s under the ocean water. I haven’t figured that out yet.
After playing around for a little while, I decided to give my mother a call to tell her that I was looking at her front door through Street View. I haven’t been down there in a while, but amazingly enough, all of my memories came back to me through all the photos that Google Earth offered me. It’s pretty incredible.
What’s really cool is the fact that you can use Google Earth for so many things, like checking out a neighborhood if you are interested in moving there, you can reminisce about places you used to live and you can even check stuff out while you are on the phone with people to get a better picture of what in the world they are talking about. I think I am going to use this the next time I talk to my father about where he works.
Okay, enough talk. Take a look at these videos to see what I am trying to get at. Then, go ahead and download your own copy of Google Earth and start having some fun.
Yesterday, while out and about, Laura and I decided to do a drive-by at the University of Connecticut, or better know as UConn in Storrs, CT. I took a gander at this area on Google Earth a few times and we actually wanted to visit for some time, but never got around to it. Now that we’re about 20 minutes from the town, it’s much easier to get it done.
Now, if you aren’t familiar with UConn, it’s basically the whole town of Storrs. I am not sure if the residents would agree with me, but that’s the way it seemed. I think it’s kind of like State College, PA and Penn State. Either way, it was pretty cool and much larger than I imagined. It was actually the biggest college I have ever visted.
Too bad it was raining and so gloomy out. I took the above photos while we were driving. We did a little zoom zoom through part of the campus.
When I was going to Binghamton University, I had a roommate who just came from Penn State. He said it took a half-hour to get anywhere on campus. That’s what it seemed like here.
From subterranean Martians to female hysteria, people have been known to believe some pretty bizarre things. What does it take to make a believable scientific theory? Apparently, not much. Here are five of the strangest examples and who knows what people will find hilariously untrue from our era in 50 years?
Web Hosting Names that Make You Go “Huh?”
There are a lot of web hosting companies out there with unusual, strange, or just plain weird names (and URLs). We have collected some of the strangest ones in this post.
Satellite imagery used to be the exclusive domain of governments and spy agencies, but ever since Google Maps and Google Earth we can all get to see weird things!
TYSM I read this one and decided to try it out on my ACER (See, its not always HP with the problems)...