Day: August 3, 2011

We began the third day by backtracking a couple of miles to New London, CT, to see the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine.  There is a VERY nice museum in New London to the submarine force.  We had intended to spend a half hour there, but we ended up staying 90 minutes.  The story of the Nautilus is fascinating.  I wonder if we have the same drive as a nation to accomplish great things like building the first nuclear submarine or putting men on the moon anymore.  It seems to me that when a country stops striving for great things it is on the path to mediocrity and merely a footnote in history.

After visiting the Nautilus, we took a quick spin through the grounds of the Coast Guard Academy.  It is a beautiful campus, but there is no visitor center.  Other than driving through the campus and identifying different buildings from the guide map, there really wasn’t anything to do there.

We then headed to Newport, RI.  This is where lots of rich people have their mansions.  As a result, prices were crazy expensive, making New York City seem pretty inexpensive.  After taking out a second mortgage to park, we took a water taxi to Fort Adams past all kinds of yachts with more square footage than the barracks at West Point.

Ft. Adams, built by Brigadier General Totten, is the largest fortification ever built in North America with the most sophisticated land defenses ever built here as well.  Forts McHenry, Sumpter, and Ticonderoga would all fit in the interior parade ground — at the same time — and still leave room for a large number of troop tents.  Ft. Adams was built after the War of 1812 as one of 40 or so fortifications built from Maine to Florida to ensure that never again would a foreign power be capable of attacking the United States.  You can only enter the fort on a guided tour.  The guide reminded us of Gilbert Gottfried, the actor, but he was very informative.

After visiting Ft. Adams we took a bus to the start of what is called “the cliff walk.”  It is a trail along the ocean.  Some of the going is difficult; other parts are easy.  The cliff walk runs behind many of the huge mansions for which Newport is famous.

It seems that many of these mansions are beyond the means of many of the rich folks to maintain.  Some have been developed as condominiums.  Others are now open for tours — at $15 each.  No thanks.  While some of the architecture was quite impressive, I didn’t have a lot of interest in seeing how the other half lives.

We completed the cliff walk late in the day and were quite hungry.  After the $4 hotdogs earlier in the day we were looking for something both quick and inexpensive.  We stopped at a grocery store and bought some prepared sandwiches.  We found a small coffee shop with exterior seating that was closed, so we illicitly staked out one of their tables for our “picnic” dinner.  We completed our day in Newport, RI, with a walk along Thames street to look in shops of stuff we don’t need.  I came close to buying a “bobble head” Robbie the Robot, but resisted.  The lessons of all the junk jettisoning we did on our recent move from Aberdeen to Severn were still to fresh in our minds.  We then drove to the Naval War College to stay in Navy Lodging — an adventure in and of itself — for the night.

Leaving Newport we eventually crossed the Cape Cod Canal.  This is widest canal in the US built at sea level.  It is this canal which designates the boundary between Cape Cod and the rest of Massachusetts.   We stopped briefly to put our hands in the water and then continued to Sandwich, MA, where we played miniature golf.

After some a little shopping in Sandwich we drove some back roads to Hyannis, MA, and eventually on to Orleans, MA.  Orleans is about the last built-up area prior to entering the part of Cape Cod which is largely nature preserve and beaches.

Candy found a place called the Cove, which is a nice mom-and-pop hotel in Orleans.  The room is large and clean.  We are right on the beach, but the hotel also has a heated outdoor pool.  (The kids like to play on the beach, but they prefer to swim in pools.)  We played miniature golf at Cape Escape Mini Golf in Orleans until the sky opened up and a boat with pairs of animals floated by.  We had had a large, Italian lunch in Sandwich, so we all had salads at Wendy’s for dinner while waiting for the rain to abate.  Then we finished our game and went back to the hotel for the night.

Tomorrow we’ll spend the day exploring and hiking the lower cape and perhaps spend some time on a beach.

The second day of our trip we drove about 90 minutes to Mystic, Connecticut.  Mystic Seaport is an outdoor museum featuring a whaling ship, Captain Morgan, which is under restoration.  In addition, there are a number of shops set up like a typical New England sea port village, such as a cooper, rope maker, printer, smithy (for making the metal parts of a ship), and a shop where wood is steamed and then bent to make boats.  All of the shops had interpreters and/or docents who did an excellent job discussing their “trade” with visitors.

One of the interesting exhibits was a history of light houses on three large monitors.  This display was inside the light house shown below.  It was an interesting presentation.  One of the interesting facts we learned is that many lighthouses have different paint schemes, called day marks, so that they can be distinguished in daylight as well as by different light patters at night.

At the shop where sextants, telescopes, and clocks were made and repaired, Sammy signed up for “Nav Quest.”  This was an activity that involved finding a series of points around the village using a spyglass and compass.  Sammy did a nice job of following the directions and finding all four points.

One of the interesting exhibits was rope making.  It turns out that the only missing requirement for Tommy to earn the Pioneering merit badge was making rope.  We learned about how at each phase of the process (fibers to yarn to strands to rope to cable) the material is twisted in the opposite direction.  It is these opposite twists working against each other that cause the rope not to unravel.

After witnessing the man overboard drill in the bay, Tommy and I helped hoist up the 2000-lb lifeboat.  This involved winding rope around the capstan and pushing it around in circles while one of the crew led us in sea shanties.  It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be; however, I can imagine it would get old if you were a sailor and had to do it all day, every day.