Mystic Seaport Museum – Day 10

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Seven years ago, when we first passed through this coastal town of Mystic, Connecticut, it was late in the day, which didn’t afford us an opportunity to spend any quality time here. We are rectifying that today.

A restaurant so small I’d say you’d be lucky to get a dozen people in this joint that’s appropriately named Kitchen Little. I had the Portuguese Fisherman breakfast consisting of chouriço (Portuguese chorizo) and linguica (Portuguese kielbasa) mixed with eggs, peppers, onions, and a jalapeno cheese on top of a Portuguese English muffin while Caroline’s breakfast omelet included fiddlehead ferns, a tasty veg discovery we’d never heard of before.

I’m happy nobody was with us on our walk through town and along the river when this drawbridge was raised for a passing boat, as we’d have embarrassed ourselves with our geek-squeals of delight, oohs, aahs, and general nerdiness that might be weird to normal people who live near drawbridges. This is the Mystic River.

The last time we were here at Mystic Seaport Museum, it was only 45 minutes before closing time; now we’re here before they open at 10:00 and are like kids going into Disneyland for the first time.

There’s a dilemma for me when entering any museum and that’s, where do I start? I want to be everywhere simultaneously and see the most important things first. That level of anxiety creates issues for me as I typically downplay the first things I see, knowing that around the corner is the real stuff. In the end, everything was worth seeing, and I often wish I’d spent more time exploring and examining the details of those impressions.

Then there’s the variable that asks, how long will it take to see everything? The answer is likely longer than we have to dedicate to this moment we’re out here. Part of my brain panics with the thought, but what if we never come back? Reality thought plays out with the good fortune that if we try to exercise some intention and desire to return, then we likely will.

The whaling ship Charles W. Morgan launched back on  July 21, 1841, and was retired in 1921 after 37 voyages over the course of its career. Lucky us as next year, the Morgan will be taken out of the water for renovations that will take nearly five years, but today, under beautiful skies, we get the opportunity to walk out on Chubb’s Wharf and walk on the deck and below of the oldest surviving commercial ship that is still afloat.

To our untrained eyes, the ship looks perfect, but then again, we cannot see what’s below the surface and how the structural integrity of the ship is holding up after being in the water for 176 years. In a world of replicas, simulacra, and simulations, it’s nearly unbelievable that this actual ship plied the waters of Earth, hunting whales and storing their oil below this deck.

Look into the rigging and try to imagine the people who crawled up the mast while at sea. They would be over 100 feet over the deck or more than 11 floors above the sea as they maneuvered among the 7,134 square feet of sail.

Below the deck are the galley, sleeping quarters, and storage space for supplies and whale oil. I can’t help but think that if the opportunity arose where a modern fleet of these old wooden masters of the sea was to offer adventurers to cross the Atlantic on such a craft, some of us would sign up for such a voyage.

While these try-pots are certainly a historic curiosity, there is also something very grim about authentic cast iron pots that were used to cook down whale blubber into oil. In some way, I feel like this is akin to looking into the ovens at Dachau that were used for cremating humans.

The Mystic Seaport Museum is a living treasure that reminds visitors that when the ships of the world came into port a full cadre of crafts and services had to be on hand to service the needs of the ships and their crews.

Plymouth Cordage Company Ropewalk was once the largest rope producer on earth, but after 140 years of business, the company shut down in 1964. The machinery and 1/3 of the ropewalk itself were moved from Massachusetts here to Mystic Seaport, where we can see the equipment and type of environment in which rope for rigging along with twine was made. For those with a keen eye, you can see that the process is nearly identical to making yarn. As for the shortened ropewalk, it used to be 110 feet long, which was needed by the men to walk out the fibers as they twisted them into lengths of rope up to 90 feet long.

This is the Fishtown Chapel that was moved to the museum in 1949. For a while back in 1900, it was used as a school but was then abandoned and sat decaying before being rescued and restored.

Trying to imagine the buzz around town when a whaling ship was seen on the horizon returning to its home base after being out at sea for two years. The spouses had to wait for the hopeful return of husbands and fathers who would come back to see their children having grown significantly older. With the masts towering 11 stories high, it would have been taller than everything in the area. At the height of the whaling industry, skyscrapers had not yet been built in Chicago or New York, so these ships would have been seen as incredible feats of engineering.

How fortunate America is that Mystic Seaport Museum also plays host to the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard, where the craft of keeping aging ships afloat and in working order lives on. We could stay here all day and maybe even a second full day, but with 245 miles between us and our next motel, we can’t linger too long, and with heavy hearts, we pull ourselves away.

Once again on the road, it was a brutal drive south past New York City – where we found ourselves in a traffic jam on the Cross Bronx Expressway that forced us to stop and crawl for an hour and a half.

We only had three miles to travel through this congested city, but it took 90 freaking minutes of astonishment and moments of claustrophobia.

Finally, we start to see the clutch of NYC release its grip on us. How do people do this every day?

Across the bridge in New Jersey, we fly in between beautiful wetlands on one side of the turnpike and stinking factories on the other. It was almost 9:45 p.m. when we arrived at our Days Inn in Wilmington, Delaware.

Whales, Walls, and Water – Day 9

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We’ve already been out and about with a walk along Clarks Cove as the sun was supposed to rise, but the heavy clouds and rain cut that short. Back in the coziness of our room, I crawled into bed for a nap until our host, Ron, was ready with breakfast. Talk about feeling like royalty living on the edge of luxury; this is it.

Imagine it’s the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, and Melville published Moby Dick 10 years prior but is still struggling to be recognized as a serious author. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are walking up to this house, and there are no waiting throngs; celebrity is proving elusive, but in the future, long after this writer has perished, he will find immortality. Maybe it’s only the notorious that find fame in their lifetimes when it relates to the kind of impacts that change our perceptions.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum opens at 9:00, and maybe because others are still at church here on Sunday, we are the first of just a few people to be visiting the exhibits. The bones Caroline is standing between do not belong to a dinosaur; they are the jawbones of the sperm whale. If you’ve not read the book, Moby Dick was an albino sperm whale.

This is a half-scale whaling ship named Lagoda that was built nearly 100 years ago, long after commercial whaling had come to an end. For five years, Melville worked the seas hunting sperm whales on a ship similar to this, where he would have had to participate in everything from harpooning the creature to taking it apart and rendering it down to oil to light parlors across America.

New Bedford Whaling Museum

From the whaling ship, the crew would board whaleboats armed with a variety of harpoons used for killing the leviathan, as seen here from a replica, though I’m not certain that the harpoons aren’t real.

Around this time, we met a docent named Lucy, who happened to be here on her day off. We share with her our fascination with all things related to the sea, how we’ve been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium countless times, our visits to Coastal Oregon, the love of tidepools that we read Moby Dick in our car while traveling, and how all of this influenced our trip to visit New Bedford. Picking up on our obvious enthusiasm, she decided to share something with us.

Lucy went over to a locked cabinet, telling us how the things inside were usually shared with school groups as adults typically don’t find it all that interesting. What she took out and handed over to us was a sample of spermaceti, some sperm oil, right whale oil, and the treasure of all treasures, ambergris. Ambergris has a scent that is magical and beyond my ability to explain just what it is. As for Lucy, she’s originally from Poland which allows us the opportunity to discuss things European and acknowledge our perception that not many Americans seem to have a deep curiosity for the natural world.

We were not going to leave New Bedford without a visit to Johnny Cake Hill to at least catch a glimpse of the Seamen’s Bethel and the Mariners’ Home. I have to admit that we couldn’t make time to visit these iconic and historic buildings as we are on our way to Mystic, Connecticut, to visit the Seaport Museum that we didn’t have the opportunity to check out when we were in the area seven years ago.

Somewhere on the road in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

The gimmick of a giant milk jug with a Holstein perched atop it worked to drag us over to Salvadors Ice Cream stand on the side of the road in Dartmouth. This is probably the quickest way to pull Caroline and me into a business; just dress it up in some kind of absurdity, and we’re yours.

Our interests seem to have no bounds, well, that’s excluding jazz, country and western, most sports, racism, and the will to stupidity; so beyond that, we are pretty much interested in most everything, including stone walls framed with dandelions on one side and blue sky on the other.

Get out and see America NOW. Believe it or not, this country is disappearing as it loses its identity to consumers of blind conformity. We visited Gray’s General Store here in Adamsville, Rhode Island, which has been in operation since 1788, but we are so far off the beaten path that, in spite of its authenticity, this historic business will likely never draw enough tourists to make it viable as those people picked up what they needed at nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts, or in Providence, Rhode Island. Meanwhile, the locals increasingly buy their goods on Amazon. Combine this with the need to remove our increasingly valuable old signage and weathervanes lest they are stolen, and the very appearance that adds so much character to these outings will one day be gone.

Caroline Wise and John Wise in Adamsville, Rhode Island

Sure, our faces are blurry but this is part of our proof that we were for a second time in our lives here in Rhode Island. It’s just crazy to think that Los Angeles County is nearly four times larger than this state. Strange that our last trip to this state saw Caroline as being blurry, and now we both are; what gives?

Add coastal Rhode Island to our list of desirable places to live.

The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island

Apparently, some very wealthy people thought the same thing about the Newport area of Rhode Island, such as The Breakers seen here. While we didn’t have the time to visit this mansion once owned by the Vanderbilt family, we made a note that it might be interesting to one day visit the complex of mansions maintained out here by the Newport Preservation Society.

Castle Hill Lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island, was our last stop before getting on it to head over to Mystic, Connecticut, where we had a room booked for the night.

We arrive in Mystic with the last bit of light offering us a glowing horizon that punctuates another perfect day. Our course today took us on a beautiful winding series of roads that kept us close to the Atlantic among farmlands and the summer stomping grounds of America’s elites of 100 years ago. The golden age of the American Industrial Machine was at its strongest back then, with the super-rich building a lifestyle that took full advantage of the countryside that was theirs. Today, we were able to have a brief glimpse of what was part of that appeal.

America – Day 10

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

View of the Atlantic from Pilgrim Sands Hotel in Plymouth, Massachusetts

I may as well give away the secret: today’s weather will be poor all day. If there was a speck of blue sky, we missed it. There is a good view of the ocean, though, and that makes up for the disappointment that the sun has dipped out.

Atlantic ocean wildlife

This penguin is in disguise as a seagull, those black tail feathers are the giveaway. Maybe I should choose a day from this trip and just lie about everything? In town here in Plymouth, we stopped for some coffee at Lalajava and tried their cranberry nut cream coffee, good stuff, and so we make a note to get on the internet when we get home and order some. (We never did do that, and as of 2018, as I’m back-filling these blog entries, they are out of business)

The somewhat controversial rock that is claimed to be "the" Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts

So this is the alleged “Plymouth Rock” that is not likely the landing spot of anyone from the Mayflower. The problem with the story is that no pilgrims ever mentioned the existence of this disembarkation point in any writings. It wasn’t until 121 years later that someone started the myth that this was the very spot where these early pilgrims set foot in North America. So, while it is interpreted as a symbol of that early colonization, its factual historical significance is relative.

Cranberry bog in Massachusetts

Our first sighting of a cranberry bog. You can bet this elicited a stronger curiosity than the rock in the previous picture. We also passed the Ocean Spray World of Cranberries headquarters. Apparently, we are in cranberry country.

Rhode Island state sign

Sadly, we just weren’t motivated enough to go stand in the rain and try to grab a selfie in front of the Rhode Island state sign. Welcome to the smallest state in America from the car.

Caroline Wise and John Wise in Rhode Island

We needed to do something to commemorate being in the smallest state in America, and so during a break in the rain, I made this WTF face after wondering how Caroline made herself blurry.

Connecticut state sign

I had to catch this Connecticut Welcomes You sign while driving down the road. Anyone who knows me probably knows I giggled at the “Town of Stonington” part of the sign.

Somewhere in Connecticut

This Connecticut place is kinda pretty, even on a drab gray day. At least the rain let up.

Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut

We arrive too close to the museum closing, and with the weather what it is, we decide we’ll have to wait for another day to visit the Mystic Seaport. We are disappointed but certain we’ll return. Something I should point out about this cross-country journey we are on, this is more an orientation of discovery to get a better idea of the lay of the land known as the United States. If we don’t get to a particular place, that’s okay because this is just the scouting exercise.

Entering New York City

I didn’t think for one second that while the majority of our trip had been rural and that we’d kind of freaked out in Boston due to the congestion, we might have the same reaction in New York City. Heck, this was so exciting, this idea of us visiting the Big Apple together for the first time, that the thrill propelled us right in. From entering Manhattan via the Bronx, we head south, making our way over to the Hudson Parkway. Wow, we’re on Broadway!

Sign pointing to Brooklyn

Okay, that was a supremely bad idea with the concert of beeping horns and bumper-to-bumper traffic. We headed for the exit leaving Manhattan via Brooklyn and then crossed over to Staten Island on the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge.

View of the New York City skyline

This was the best handheld shot I could get of NYC from Staten Island before we tried to put even more distance between us and the chaos.

White Castle Burgers in New Jersey

I’d only ever had these from the frozen food aisle at some random grocery store out West; they suck fresh and in person too. What do people see in White Castle? They need In-N-Out Burger.

It’s 10:00 p.m. when we enter Pennsylvania, our fifth state today. It will be 11:45 before we finally find a Ramada Inn in Reading, Pennsylvania. We must have stopped at half a dozen other motels that were all sold out. We are tired.