Kennebunkport to Mystic Seaport

A mockingbird was singing extravagantly outside the Yachtsman very early in the morning; the storm had passed, and the bay was calm and still - what a difference from last night!

Breakfast was a casual affair, with only one other person present, a man a little younger than I am who said that he had been coming here for years.  He seemed to be in the know.  "You can't go wrong with Mabel's," he said when we told him where we had eaten last night.  Then he told us about a restaurant we had not heard of (and for good reason) in Camden, the best Thai restaurant he had ever dined in, but completely under the radar; he said there was no sign or advertising, just a typewritten piece of paper tacked to the front door each day for the menu.  We would have loved discovering that kind of place!

We drove through Kennebunkport and passed some incredible homes.  This was "The Wedding Cake House."

And this mansion was unnamed, but I made a u-turn to take a photo.  It is inconceivable that these houses are lived in instead of being museums.

It seemed like no time before we crossed over into Rhode Island (such a diminutive state! - and where highway work-zone signs say "Rhode Work Ahead"), and then into Connecticut, the state I was born in.  These New England states are so small compared to North Carolina, where the distance from Murphy to Manteo is 545 miles; the distance we were driving today, through three states, was only 182 miles.

I never visited Mystic Seaport as a boy growing up in Connecticut; I suppose my frugal Dad thought it was too far for a Sunday afternoon drive (62 miles from my home in North Haven, even closer to East Haven where we lived before that).  Martha and I routinely drive 250 to 300 miles per day on trips like this, and 60 miles on a Saturday morning grocery-shopping trip.

The historic drawbridge in Mystic Seaport is something of a marvel; it was built in 1920 and is still in operation, dividing the town in half on historic Route 1.

Mystic is a lovely little seaport, its streets lined with shops and restaurants.  I strolled along the river and spotted this rowing crew out on the Mystic River taking instructions from a stern-looking women in a nearby speedboat, bullhorn in hand.  It had warmed up considerably; it would have been a nice day to go rowing.

On the top of the hill was Mystic Pizza, made famous from the Julia Roberts movie of the same name, which I have to confess I have never seen; I have put it in my Netflix Queue, however, now that I have seen where the movie was (in part) filmed.

I took a break form walking and had a blueberry scone and a cup of coffee, sitting outside Sift Bake Shop, enjoying the sunshine.  Up the street was this statue of the great John J. Kelley and his dog; Kelley was an Olympic Marathon, National Marathon, and Boston Marathon champion who hailed from nearby North Stonington.  The Boston Marathon had been held four days ago, and somebody had slipped his or her singlet on the statue.

We had dinner overlooking the Mystic River at S & P Oyster Company, where we again had small plates, including my first-ever taste of squid-ink risotto.

It was strange to be back in Connecticut again after 50 years.  My Dad would have limited our visit to Mystic, in those days, to "window shopping," and squid-ink risotto was something from another world (and would have been for anybody back in those days); did we even know what risotto was when I was growing up?  Or that squid ink was something a person might want to actually eat?