The drive from Duck Puddle Campground in Nobleboro, Maine to Chamberlain Lake Campground in Woodstock, Connecticut was supposed to take about 4 hours. We usually only like to drive 2-3 hours at a time so this was already on the high end of our tolerance range. Thanks to traffic delays (car accidents, busy roads) it ended up taking around 5 hours. Plus another hour to get backed into our spot and get the house level. And because of her recent injury, Pandora was riding in a carrier on the passenger seat of my car for this trip. Her sedative wore off after about 3 hours. It was NOT a fun drive for any of us.
The campground is nice and quiet, though. The spots are generously sized and surrounded by trees and many of the other campers greeted us when we pulled in. We don’t have sewer hookups but the dump station is nearby. We only have 30 amp electric hookups but we have been dealing with that at the last several parks – it just means that we can’t run the air conditioner at the same time as the oven or the blow dryer. It isn’t ideal but we can make it work.
We spent most of the week relaxing at home – I had hurt my foot over the weekend and it took a few days to be comfortable walking on it again- but on Thursday night, we decided to get out and explore. we drove into Killingly, Connecticut to visit Logee’s Plants for Home and Garden. They have an amazing selection of exotic plants – many of which we had never seen before. We ended up buying a few air plants to bring home but mostly we just enjoyed walking around and looking at (and smelling) everything there. The coolest part was a 123 year old lemon tree! The lemons on it can grow up to 5 pounds – they were enormous!
We also drove into Putnam to check out a comic book shop and we ended up eating dinner at Black Dog Bar & Grille. We had the Honey Bacon Bread, the Blueberry BBQ Bacon Burger, and the Lobster Roll.
On Friday night, we decided to explore nearby Putnam. We visited Wonderland Comics for a few new additions to my Firefly comic collection. We also stopped in a few local shops including a snack shop and an antique store. We finished up the evening with a visit to Woodstock Creamery for some delicious meat and dairy products. As we travel, we love shopping from local farms!
On Saturday, we took advantage of the beautiful day to visit Dinosaur State Park. This was the one thing I was looking forward to doing while we were at this stop and it was the perfect day for it. We drove to Rocky Hill, Connecticut (just outside of Hartford) to visit the park. This park is home to one of the largest collection of dinosaur tracks ever found in North America. The footprints were discovered back in the 1960’s and covered a huge portion of land. They couldn’t secure enough funding to dig and preserve the entire site so much of the tracks were covered back up in an effort to keep them safe for future digs. They were able to fund a small park with a covered dome where they left some of the tracks exposed for guests to enjoy. They made a small museum and education center and have nature paths outside.
They also offer the opportunity to make the coolest keepsake – guests can bring their own supplies and make a plaster cast of a dinosaur footprint. This was the thing that I was most excited about and I had been looking forward to this opportunity for months. We took 12 pounds of Plaster of Paris, vegetable oil, a old towel cut into strips, a 5 gallon bucket, and a roll of paper towels (about $20 worth of items) and a staff member helped us to make the cast at no additional charge. They had 5 or 6 different stations to choose from and the entire process took about 45 minutes to an hour. We coated the original footprint in rock with vegetable oil and placed a metal ring (provided by the park) around the print. A staff member bought us water and I mixed the plaster mostly using my hands to make sure we got out as many of the clumps as possible. We poured the plaster into the ring and sealed the bottom with the strips of towel to keep the plaster from running out under the ring. Then we smoothed it off and left it to dry.
While it was drying, we went into the museum to have a look. There was a walkway setup over a large section of earth where the tracks had been discovered and it was amazing to walk the same pathways that actual dinosaurs had once traveled. The tracks themselves are referred to as Eubrontes but that classifies the tracks themselves and not the dinosaur that made them. It is unknown exactly how many individuals made the tracks although there were clearly several based on the size differences. It is also unknown if they all traveled together as it is possible that the tracks were made at different times over the course of a few hours to a few weeks.
No bones have been found at the site, not because no animals died there but because the soil and environmental conditions that worked to preserve the footprints so beautifully are not conducive to preserving bone and other remains. As a result of this, it is unknown exactly what species left the tracks. Observations tell us that they were left by a three toed dinosaur that walked upright (bipedally). A lack of drag marks means that the tails were held out from the body – they did not drag the ground behind the animal. Based on this information and remains found in other parts of the country, it is believed that the animal was a carnivorous dinosaur that is related to Dilophosaurus (the frilled, venom spitting dinosaur from Jurassic Park). Aside from Tyrannosaurus Rex, Dilophosaurus was always one of my favorites growing up so this was especially interesting for me.
After about 40 minutes in the museum, we returned to our cast and a staff member helped us remove it from the metal ring. We took it back to the car along with our leftover materials, spent some time walking on the nature paths, then moved on to our next adventure.
We spent some time driving around Hartford but didn’t really have the time to do much as we needed to get back home to put Harley out. We did drive past the Mark Twain House but didn’t’ have time for the tour.
After stopping by the house to walk Harley, John found a fair in Massachusetts and we decided to go check it out. We arrived in Lancaster, Massachusetts and followed signs to park in a large field. From there, school buses transported us to the fairgrounds for the Bolton Fair.
We walked around for a while and visited the exhibit barns and animal areas. We were able to catch a few minutes of a BMX bike demonstration and, of course, we had to eat some greasy fair food. We had a sausage sandwich, some chicken wings, some giant fried mushrooms on a stick and a big bowl of french fries. I was ecstatic to find a Kona Ice truck and enjoyed a large Pina Colada flavored sno-cone. We had intended to watch the demolition derby but there weren’t enough seats in the bleachers and people were lined up three deep around the fences so we gave up and went home.
On Sunday, we drove over to Providence, Rhode Island for a look around. We had brunch at The District (Chicken and Waffles and a Breakfast Pizza), played Pokémon Go on the campus of Brown University, and had a refreshing frozen lemonade from Del’s before driving back home.
We spent the week relaxing at home. We gave some neighbors a tour of the house and John got to do an interview over Zoom to be on a brand new podcast about RV life and living on the road. We will be sure to give updates on that when we know more. We also had a visit on Wednesday night from a friend that John made at the tiny house workshop that he attended in Georgia a few years ago. They stayed in touch after the class and have updated each other as they both began their own tiny house builds.
Our final activity in Connecticut was a vet visit with Pandora. Back in Maine, she had suffered a laceration to the tip of her tail and was patched up by the wonderful staff at Animal Emergency Clinic of Mid-Maine. It was during this visit that Dora was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism. She was placed on medication and was supposed to have her bloodwork rechecked in two weeks to calibrate the dosage. Well, our last Friday in Connecticut was the two week mark. I had made the appointment at Peake Brook Veterinary Clinic as soon as we arrived in town and they were the nicest people I could imagine. They removed her sutures and said that the wound looks great. They also said that her thyroid levels have come down considerably since her ER visit but are still slightly elevated so we are increasing the dosage and will have to find another vet to recheck her bloodwork in about 4 weeks.
We will deal with all of Pandora’s health issues as they come up but for now we will focus on the move ahead of us tomorrow. John is on vacation next week and we will be visiting Sleepy Hollow, New York and NYC!
