As most of you know, we have been up in New England for a few weeks.  We started out with our church group helping to facilitate a vacation Bible school at a church in Connecticut.  That effort went great because the church was fired up about the event and because we had one of the best mission teams I have worked with.  The team flew back home on a Sunday and that began a 10 day road trip in New England for our family.

I lived in New Hampshire for a while after completing the Appalachian Trail and thoroughly enjoy making return visits.  There are so many unique areas to explore!  This trip we wound up spending a lot of our time on the Connecticut coast.  Here are a few of the highlights and lessons learned:

Thimble Island Cruise

We tried to stay off the beaten path on this trip, avoiding tourist areas like Mystic in exchange for small towns along the coast.  We were eating lunch on the green in Guilford, CT when my wife went into a small toy store to find something for the girls to play with.  The store owner said that we needed to backtrack a few miles and catch the Thimble Island cruise.  He was right!  We hopped on a small boat that took us on a 45 minute cruise around to the unique set of small islands.  Captain Bob grew up in the area and knew the history of all the islands.  Some of the islands had a grand home on them.  Other islands were a bit larger and had a cluster of homes.  And there were some small islands that had just one simple structure on them.  It was a fun and unique thing to do with the family.

The Beach

Let’s be clear at the start…I’m not a beach person.  I don’t care for getting in the water and I don’t like getting sand on me.  But it was sure fun to watch the girls at the beach.  We spent one of our mornings at Rocky Neck State Park beach on the Connecticut coast.  It was a gorgeous morning to be on the beach.  Many times we had to stop our youngest daughter from running out into the ocean.  The child has no fear of the water.

Yelp

If you have a smart phone you should have the Yelp app installed on it.  We have always found Yelp to be a great way to find unique places to visit where ever we are.  If you’re not familiar with Yelp, it is a website where users/clients can review restaurants, hotels, and any number of services and venues.  In the app you just tell it where you are and what you are looking for.  We found several great places to grab lunch or dinner by using Yelp.  One of my favorite was the Ecclectic Chef in Niantic, CT.  It was a simple sandwich shop that was family owned.  Many Yelp reviewers raved about the lobster and crab bisque as well as the prime rib grinder.  We tried both and they were amazing!  And here’s the crazy thing, our lunch at this great and unique restaurant cost the same as lunch at the Subway across the street.  There were several other restaurants we found on Yelp that lived up to the reviews.  We also found some great places to go…

The Book Barn

One of those places was The Book Barn which was also in Niantic.  We spent several days in Niantic exploring the area.  The Book Barn was like no used book store I have ever visited.  All the books range in price from $1 to $8.  The books are arranged in barns, sheds and carts that are strewn throughout an acre of land.  Each area is a different subject.  They are so popular that there are satellite locations that house specific genres of books (i.e. – the downtown location contains all the children’s books.)  The Book Barn had countless books, 10 cats, 2 goats, turtles and a children’s play area.  It was a uniquely New England bookstore.

Candlepin Bowling

Another uniquely New England thing that we did on our trip was candlepin bowling.  We found Sawyer’s Bowladrome in Northborough, MA on Yelp.  The Bowladrome has six lanes and is located in the lower level (basement) of a business building.  It has been there since 1953 and probably hasn’t changed too much over the years.  Candlepin bowling uses pins that are thinner and fairly straight compared to the 10-pin bowling we are used to in Texas.  The ball is about the size of a softball and has no holes.  There are 10 frames (or ‘boxes’ in candlepin) per game.  The player gets three chances to knock down all the pins in each ‘box’.  The fallen pins are not removed from the lane after each throw as they are with 10-pin bowling.  It is harder than you think to knock down all 10 candlepins even with three throws.  The scoring is also unique to candlepin bowling.  Our older daughter had a lot of fun with candlepin bowling since the ball is really easy to throw or roll.  I even picked up my souvenier for the trip at the Bowladrome.  My observant wife spotted used candlepins for $5 on the sales counter.  I’m sure that looked kind of odd coming through TSA screening.

Church Family

Wherever we go, we try our very best to attend worship service on Sunday and Wednesday.  We take God with us on vacation.  On Wednesday we worshiped with the church in Groton, CT.  They were super friendly and even invited us back the next day for their 4th of July event.  We went back and it was a perfect fit for our young family.  We have a 20 month old that likes to be asleep by 8pm and a 5 year old that doesn’t like fireworks.  We also spent a weekend with the church in Manchester, NH.  This is where I worshiped when I lived in New Hampshire and we stayed with the preacher and his wife who are absolutely great people.  One night the preacher and his wife took our girls out so my wife and I could enjoy a quiet meal together.  They took our kids to Chuck E. Cheese, a petting zoo and an ice cream shop!  If you ask our five year old, the best part of the whole trip was Chuck E. Cheese. It is nice to know that anywhere we go we can find people of a common faith and have instant connections.

Exhaustion

We tried to not cram too much into our days since our entire family was worn out heading into our vacation.  We had been gone to church camp in Oklahoma for a week and were home one day before hopping on a plane to Connecticut.  We had a super week of VBS with the church in New Milford but every super event requires energy.  By the time we were getting into our vacation our girls had been on the road for two weeks and our nerves were getting a bit frazzled.  We had some moments where nerves got stretched thin but all in all we were able to keep it together and everyone had a great time.  I wouldn’t recommend cramming a summer’s worth of activities into 3+ weeks though 🙂

Wrap Up…

I could go on and on about fun things that we did on vacation.  From our drive along Route 146 on the coast of CT, our time in small town CT for 4th of July, Bob’s Clam Shack, Old Sturbridge Village, and on and on…there were lots of fun times and good memories.  The benefits of vacation for family and health are undeniable!  I hope you enjoy some of my favorite photos in the gallery below.  I’ll be back to my normal schedule on Monday with some thanks for those who wrote guest posts and a new post as well.