The Distracted Wanderer

On a beautifully blue day that was bitterly cold and windy, I made the drive from Norwich back up to the North Shore of Massachusetts once again with the mission of dropping my oldest daughter back off at college following the end of her Christmas break. Traffic on the Mass Pike itself wasn't too bad as we drove towards Boston and points north but when we got to the exit that I normally take for I-95, traffic was ridiculously backed up so instead I decided to detour through Boston and head north on I-93. Normally I will avoid driving through Boston like the plague but I figured that mid-afternoon on a Sunday probably wouldn't be too bad and it really wasn't. From her vantage point in the passenger seat, Amanda took this shot of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, one of the widest cable-stayed bridges in the world, through the dirty car windshield. It's not very good quality but that's what happens when your windshield is enduring a New England winte

As I mentioned in my last post, fellow Nutmeg State blogger and real-life friend  Princess Patti of Ansonia in the Valley and myself ventured out on a beautiful October Saturday in search of foliage and other Northwestern Connecticut sites. Sadly, we seemed to be a bit late for any fabulous foliage finds but we had a good time nonetheless as we wandered the highways and by-ways of parts of Connecticut I'd only seen on a map before.  I think we meant to get to Kent Falls State Park as there's a rather famous - by Connecticut standards - waterfall there but either I took the wrong turn in Albuquerque or we opted to forgo it this trip as we never got there. Instead of heading south towards Kent we turned towards the town of Cornwall Bridge and points north.  Along the way (I'm pretty sure it was after I accidentally blew through the stop sign at the bottom of that big hill!) we made a stop alongside scenic Route 7 as it ran parallel to the Housatonic River as I thought it m

Way back on October 23rd of last year, Princess Patti of Ansonia in the Valley and I got together on a sunny Saturday with beautiful blue skies and tolerable temperatures to explore a bit of Northwestern Connecticut.  The object of our adventure was to ferret out and photograph some foliage before it was gone for another year. Patti, a blogger whom I have had the pleasure of getting together with in real life several times, lives a little over an hour away from me just a bit past New Haven and much closer to the northwest hills so it made sense to meet at her royal residence and venture forth from there.  Her loving spouse who is also a blogger, Prince Ralph , had prepared a list of places for us to check out so we set out with his list, a partial bag of donuts, and my GPS unit to see what we could see. In addition to being an ace reporter for the New Haven Register , Patti is also a professional passenger as her Prince is usually in charge of operating their royal carriage whene