Sometimes We Just Need a Day of Rest

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

July 24, 2022

We have made several road trips during the five days we have camped in the center of the state of Connecticut at Nelson Family Campground. But some times, we just need a day of rest. While the campground's swimming pool was full with families that leave RVs here all summer, we're content to take this Sunday off from touring about the state. After church, we cooked a delicious meal using some of the delicious summer vegetables that we have been given, followed by a fresh peach dessert. Some times wanderers just need a day to stay home. But before we left East Hampton, Connecticut, we had to take the advice from one of our camping neighbors and bike the local trail.

This is the Airline Trail, and it is surrounded with rock walls and covered with a canopy of trees! It was beautiful!

More importantly, it's an old railroad trail so it is basically flat. We rode five miles down the trail and then turned around a little after we crossed this bridge over the river.

We are in the hills of Connecticut. So it was an engineering feat to build a railroad track that connected the tops of these tall hills while still keeping the grade at less than 4%. Giant metal trestles called viaducts were built to connect the hill tops. Signs along the bike trail showed pictures of these viaducts and the way they looked then.

As train loads increased, the early viaducts couldn't support their weight. So those viaducts have been filled in with rocks and dirt to strengthen them. In the picture below, we are riding over one of those early viaducts that now looks like a long and narrow dirt bridge with steep drop-offs on both sides.

After exploring the inland portions of Connecticut for a week, the next morning we headed towards the ocean. We drove a whopping 32 miles to another Boondocker's Welcome site near Niantic. Here we have a lake side view of Gorton's Pond and 30-amp electrical hook-up. We've had our day of rest and we're ready to explore the Atlantic coast line here in Connecticut.