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Published: November 10th 2007
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Posted by: Onaxthiel: It's getting cold in New England. The downside of this is waking up and shivering hard as you change and having to run around and jump about for a few minutes while feeling returns to your digits. The upside is that we don't get the misting and dew in the mornings that we were getting back when the temperatures were high enough to carry moisture.
Housatonic Meadow State Park is a nice place to wake up in, with a bubbling river running right behind the campsites. There are a few trails running through the relatively small state park, all of which we skipped in our haste to lay down tracks toward New Haven. Besides, there were two stops we knew we needed to make between us and Obfuscator's friend J.
The first of these was only a few miles from our camp, a place called Kent Falls. The falls look interesting from the base, but taken alone they are, perhaps, nothing spectacular. Just a small series of cascades feeding a small brook that winds through an open field surrounded by deciduous forest. But the effect when taken as a whole is quite lovely. There is a
placard at the edge of the parking lot that commemorates an impressionist who painted a similar vista a century ago to capture the spirit of New England. Strangely, that was not dissimilar to my thoughts when I saw the park in the morning light. Higher up the falls, the park stops being part of the equation, and the fact that you are looking at thousands (millions?) of years of geologic slicing starts to become apparent. The waters have cut thin, high pressure routes right through the exposed bedrock that channels the current. In many places along the back switching route of the falls, we found the perfectly round potholes left by swirling cataracts, now orphaned by the flows that created them. The most impressive example of this effect is found at the very top of the falls, where a fast flowing river creates a thin ribbon of water to spill over the cusp of glacial rock.
By the time we had finished with Kent Falls, we had pretty much eliminated any chance of making it back to Hartford to see their (opulent) state house. So we went to our alternative stop on the way to New Haven, the Clock
Museum of Bristol. The museum is there to commemorate that at one time, virtually all the clocks used in the US were produced in Connecticut. The folks that run the show are fairly obsessed with clocks, of all kinds, but particularly the locally produced Waterbury and Ingraham brands, the last two manufacturers in the US until their closure. Personally, I am quite impressed by clocks, their mechanisms and artifice. So I was able to spend a solid two hours wandering the halls and seeing their collection, and still didn't see half of what they had on display. For me the highlight was their antique pocket watch display, featuring the products of 17th and 18th century craftsmen, from an era when virtually no one except the nobles could afford to know the time. I would definitely recommend the clock museum to anyone interested, as long as they had the time available. Make sure to arrive about 10 minutes prior to any given hour.
Our next locale was New Haven, home to Yale, the most prestigious cover for a secret society on earth. The entire school has been set up so that Skull and Bones can conduct their secret rituals. Because
the 18-24 year olds that are being inducted will of course, all end up being world leaders of some sort. It's such a powerful organization that when students from other colleges even ask questions about it at press conferences, campus security will mob and taze them.
After finding a parking spot near the university hospital, we began our foot movement to find J. After meeting her, we went to lunch at an Indian buffet restaurant. From there it was on to the campus for a brief tour and some coffee before getting back on the road. We were informed that to make the campus look older, the school sprayed some of its' newer buildings with acid to give them the proper aged appearance. That, combined with great stonework make for a lovely campus, even if it is faux old.
After New Haven we drove for a campsite in New York state. By the time we arrived it was very dark, being almost seven o'clock. (I hate daylight savings time.) So we set about cooking our dinner and making cell phone calls until the late hours, and went to bed in the chill mountain air.
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Jeff
non-member comment
daylight savings
do you hate daylight savings, or the lack thereof? Daylight savings makes it stay light longer in the evening. So if you're complaining about it getting dark early, what you want is for Daylight savings to last longer. OK I'll stop now.