On the side of our house stands one tree - one rather large tree - that started dropping its leaves back around the beginning of September and continued to drop them until about a week and a half ago. As those following me on Facebook know, I have been battling fallen leaves now for several weeks and I vowed that Saturday was going to be the end of the battle.
With rake and bags in hand, I faced my foe in the yard ...
... about two hours, seven more bags, one cranky teenager, several passes with the lawn mower, and lots of sore muscles later I am happy to say that I think I am finished ...
... now to wait for the Norwich Department of Public Works to come by and remove the bags containing the bodies of the dead (leaves)!
I do love fall but this part I could do without! I think I'm finally done, though ... or at least I sure hope I am!
Last week Sandy of Traveling Bells passed on a blog award to me that she had received called the Over the Top Award. I thought it was lovely but the rules called for a) passing the award on to five other bloggers and b) answering the following list of questions with one word. Well, as you all know, I am rather bad at writing anything short and that includes one word answers to questions so as I thank Sandy for thinking of me with the award, I am a) not passing it on to anyone else and b) not answering the questions with one word. Go figure, eh? Sandy, I hope you don't mind too much!
1. Where is your cell phone? On my nightstand 2. Your hair? Desperately in need of something! 3. Your mother? Took her to lunch yesterday and did some shopping afterward. 4. Your father? Waiting for my mother in heaven. 5. Your favorite food? Mexican 6. Your dream last night? A large combination lizard/praying mantis had attached itself to my right hand and I couldn't get it off! 7. Your favorite drink? A good cup of coffee! 8. Your dream/goal? To be able to retire someday 9. What room are you in? The extremely messy and disorganized dining room - Amanda, come pick some of this stuff up!! 10. Your hobby? Photography it seems! 11. Your fear? This winter's heating bill! 12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? A relationship with a nice guy would be wonderful but I suspect I may be right where I am now. 13. Where were you last night? At home watching old black & white scary movies with Amanda (ah, Vincent Price!) 14. Something that you aren't? Physically fit. 15. Muffins? Sure! 16. Wish list item? Zoom lens for my D60 17. Where did you grow up? My father was career Air Force so all over the place - Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. 18. Last thing you ate? Chocolate cake last night while watching old movies with Amanda. 19. What are you wearing? PJ's and a warm robe! 20. Your TV? In need of replacement! 21. Your Pets? Evra seems to be doing okay though very sluggish (Amanda says that's normal); Demise is sleeping in her hamster habitat; and we're thinking of adopting a neighborhood stray cat that Amanda wants to name Rufus. 22. Friends? I am thankful for all of them! 23. Your life? A lot of time at work but I don't mind. 24. Your mood? A'ight at the moment! 25. Missing Someone? Jamie 26. Vehicle? Gets fantastic mileage which is good with all the little side trips we've been taking! 27. Something you're not wearing? Make-up, I rarely do make-up at all. 28. Your favorite store? Michael's or Borders 29. Your favorite color? Purple 30. When was the last time you laughed? This morning at Amanda modeling her new snuggie! 31. Last time you cried? At the funeral for the owner of my company on Thursday. 32. Your best friend? Lives too far away in California. 33. One place that I go to over and over? Other than work?!? 34. Facebook? Indeed! 35. Favorite place to eat? The Olive Garden comes to mind - especially if I have great dining companions!
If anyone else wants to steal the list of questions and do a quick meme, I think that would be grand - award or not!
While out in the side yard raking leaves this past Friday afternoon I received a rather interesting text message from another Connecticut blogger whom I have had the extreme pleasure of meeting several times - Princess Patti of Ansonia in the Valley aka the Late Bloomer Boomer. The text, which was a Facebook message, read: "Do you want to go ghost hunting with me tomorrow night? I was just invited .. really!" Obviously it got my attention so after wrangling a few more leaves into bags I came into the house and emailed Patti about her very interesting message.
It seems that Patti, who is an ace reporter for The New Haven Register, had been invited by Valley Arts Council President Rich DiCarlo to go ghost-hunting in the old Sterling Opera House in Derby on Halloween night along with several other invitees. Not knowing a thing about the Sterling Opera House I did a little quick research that revealed to me that the Sterling Opera House was the first structure in Connecticut to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (very cool) and that it was in the process of being renovated after quite a few years of standing empty on Elizabeth Street in downtown Derby, the smallest city in Connecticut.
Built in 1889, the theater opened on April 2nd of that year and remained in use until 1945. As one of the premier vaudeville houses in the area, the Sterling Opera House can boast a pretty good list of "people who performed here" including Harry Houdini, George Burns, Enrico Caruso, Lionel Barrymore, John Philip Sousa, Red Skelton, and even the former ex-heavyweight champion boxer John L. Sullivan who performed the role of Simon Legree in a production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin". In 1936 the famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart addressed the local Women's Club there and one of my favorite dancers, Donald O'Connor, once upon a time tripped the boards of the Sterling's stage.
The building was designed by H.E. Fricken, one of the creators of the famed Carnegie Hall in New York City, and he combined several different architectural styles in designing the Sterling. He used the Italianate Victorian style for the exterior and roof-top as well as the interior walls and doorways; the interior seating plan, influenced by German composer and theater director Richard Wagner, is in a triangular arrangement which gives all seats an unobstructed view of the 60-by-34 foot stage; and acoustics at the Sterling were second to none with even just a whisper being clearly heard from all areas of the auditorium.
All in all the Sterling was quite the place in its day but after its closing it pretty much fell into disrepair and is now undergoing the lengthy process of renovation. The outside is looking pretty good but as for the inside ... well, let's just say that it could use a good dusting for starters but the architecture and design are absolutely beautiful - something I found out first-hand on a somewhat dark Halloween night!
Of course I just had to take up Patti's offer to explore the building with her but first I asked if I could take my friend Amy along as Derby is a bit of a drive from Norwich and if I was going to go into an old and dark building that possibly had a ghost or two on Halloween night I wanted some company on the ride home "just in case". Plus I knew that Amy would be totally up for going along! Patti checked with Rich who said that it would be no problem - just make sure we brought along flashlights and cameras - so after making sure that Amanda was all set for her Halloween plans with friends, off we went.
Amy and I met Patti in the parking lot of the rather old Derby train station just at the time the heavens really decided to open up and drop some serious rain on top of us. But of course! Once it slowed down some, we followed Patti over to Elizabeth Street and parked outside of the Sterling Opera House which looked rather ominous in the darkness. The plan was to meet everyone else at 10:15 so in the meantime we walked around the Derby Green a little bit as the rain had miraculously stopped and Patti filled me in on a bit of the history of the area.
Apparently there was supposed to be a psychic along for the evening along with a paranormal investigator but the psychic must not have known h/she had other plans when they agreed to come out for the evening as h/she never showed up. With that absence, there ended up being just the three of us along with Rich DiCarlo, Mike - another Derbian whom Patti was very familiar with - and the paranormal investigator whose name I never got!
As Rich unlocked and opened the doors the first thing we were met with was the smell of old ... really, really old. Ah, I thought, this should make for quite an interesting evening -and blog post, too! With flashlights in hand we made our way up the first rather steep staircase after being told by Mike and Rich to be careful where we walked as there were soft spots and holes in the floor. Did I mention the place was old?!?
Once we got upstairs we all gathered in what was the orchestra section of the theater and waited while Mike turned on what few utility lights they had rigged around the room. Following that, Amy took off with Paranormal Guy and Rich while Patti and I made our way up to the first balcony with Mike. Even though we were there to try to find a ghost or two, I have to say that I wasn't really at all scared - just more fascinated with the building than anything. Even though the place had definitely seen better days, it was easy to picture what a grand and glorious place it must have been when it was open and patrons were filling the 1,250 seats.
From the first balcony we continued upstairs to what could definitely be called 'the cheap seats' on the second balcony. As Mike explained, these were the seats that were generally used by servants and such of those more wealthy patrons who attended performances at the Opera House. The seats were more like very narrow church pews and had to be horribly uncomfortable even back when people were smaller. Mike explained that in the renovations those seats would eventually be taken out and replaced.
Mike had to leave after he showed us the way back down from upstairs so Patti and I spent some time taking pictures from the stage before hooking up with Rich who then took us downstairs for a tour of the old Town Hall Offices and Police Station. I'll be doing a separate post on that part of the evening so as not to overwhelm you with too many pictures!
When we came back upstairs we found Paranormal Guy doing some filming and picture-taking on the first floor with Amy nowhere in sight. Uhm? Amy? Turns out she was upstairs on the second floor by herself (that girl is brave!) and when she came downstairs to join us she told us that we all needed to go upstairs and take a look at one of the staircases as she had been seeing some strange lights on it but wasn't sure what to make of them.
All five of us trooped up to the staircase outside of the first balcony that led up to the left-hand side of the second balcony as Amy explained that she had been watching different plays of light on the stairs. She didn't think that what she was seeing was a result of cars going past outside but she wanted our opinions on it - if the lights were to come back - so we all took up a spot in front of the stairs and stared intensely at the stairs.
After a fashion a small light started to descend from the top and stopped in the middle of the stairs. There were no cars going past outside at the time so we knew that couldn't be it. Amy, who has no problems in speaking to those who aren't there, asked the light to repeat itself and after a short pause, another light came down the stairs from a different angle. Okay ... again there were no cars going past. Soon a car did come down Elizabeth Street and as we watched the play of light across the windows that were quite a distance above us, nothing appeared on the stairs. Hmm ...
Amy again asked for the light to reappear and a very short time later a much brighter light came down the stairs and this time turned the corner to go down the next set of stairs. Along with that light came a rather cold blast of air and Rich, who was closest to the stair railing, showed us that the hair on his arms was standing on edge. Again no cars were going past outside.
Rich decided to try to see if maybe there was some other light being reflected in from one of the other windows and as he tried positioning himself in various spots, the biggest light yet came down the stairs and stopped in the middle of the staircase as it sparkled and moved. Again, no cars were going by and another blast of cold air gave all of us goosebumps and made Rich's breath visible. There was no way that it was cold enough in the building for anyone's breath to be visible but Rich's was and the backs of my legs were getting darned cold.
Paranormal Guy was videotaping during this whole time but when the lights started really playing around with us, he started having battery problems with his video recorder. From what I've heard, that isn't all that unusual when dealing with spirits and both Rich and Patti had been having intermittent problems with their batteries all evening, too. I did manage to get one picture of a small bit of light on the stairs during all this but otherwise I had no pictures with orbs or anything else suspicious while we were at the stairs. Be interesting to see what Paranormal Guy got with his equipment - if anything.
Finally we decided that we had asked the light to show itself more than enough times and we went back downstairs where we snapped a few more pictures and then decided that, being as how it was around 12:30, it was time to call it a night. Amy and I had a long drive ahead of us and even though we had the whole daylight savings time hour to fall back on, I still had to be at work in the morning for my double shift and I wasn't going to be getting much sleep.
It was most definitely worth the drive, though, and I'm really glad that Patti invited us along with her. Even though I didn't get any pictures of shadowy figures like Rich got back in 2007 - which you can read about in Patti's article in The New Haven Register - I still had a good time exploring a place that was obviously seeped in history - and dust! Plus we had that whole "light on the stairs" experience to mull over. Was there something there? Well, all five of us saw the light and felt the cold and we just couldn't come up with a logical explanation for any of it so perhaps there was. Perhaps there are some opera lovers still hanging out at the Sterling waiting for the doors to reopen and some new talent to take the stage. You just never know!
There are lots of orbs on some of the pictures in the video above but are they signs of ghostly activity? I'm not sure but I don't think that they could all be considered dust as I took over 300 pictures and the vast majority of them have no orbs or anything on them. Perhaps Rich can get the guys from the Discovery Channel's Ghosthunters to come in and see what they can find; I do he's working on that and if they do an investigation, I'll definitely watch that episode!
Lots to do today and it seems like no time to do it so I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a bit longer for my post about the trip Princess Patti and I took to the old Sterling Opera House in Derby on Halloween night. I apologize sincerely but when you've got over 300 pictures to go through, it just seems to take awhile!
In the meantime, being that today is Election Day, I thought I'd post just a couple of pictures from our trek through the basement of the building which used to be the Derby Town Hall once upon a time. It was pretty cool down there in an old and dilapidated, paint-coming-off-the-walls-in-flakes kind of way!
In this picture Patti is checking out the old voting machine that we found in the former Town Clerk's Office. Obviously it hasn't been used in about 40 years ...
Hmm, I wonder who won that year??
Don't forget to go out and exercise your right to vote and then have yourselves a good Tuesday!
Just a quick update for those of you on Facebook that knew I was going to do some ghost-hunting on Halloween night ... I did make it back safe and sound with some rather interesting pictures to show for the night but have yet to go through all of them what with needing to go to work and earn a paycheck and all that fun stuff!
My friend Amy and I went down to Derby on Saturday night to meet with some blogging royalty who had asked me to join her on a ghost-hunt at the old Sterling Opera House. Patti had been invited by Rich, curator of the building, and for some reason she thought I might like to tag along, too. Hmm, I wonder why?!?
Anyhow, because Derby is about 75-80 miles from where I live I asked if I could bring Amy along with me as she loves that sort of thing plus I'd have some company along for the ride back in case I'd managed to scare myself out of my wits! Rich said "sure!" so off we went ... on Halloween night ... to an abandoned building ... to see what we could find!
Pictures and a post to come soon but in the meantime, I need to go do that whole "earn a paycheck thing" again! Hope everyone has a grand Monday!
A reader left a comment on my post about the Taft Tunnel this past Tuesday that I thought I would address today as it just so happens that I have pictures of that of which she wrote:
"Sher said ... I've been there. But you were lucky to have a train come through that day. Now in the last picture, if you continue down along side the tracks (along the river) you will come across a small man made dam. It's an interesting area to hike."
Sher is absolutely right that there is, in fact, a small dam in the area of the Taft Tunnel which is appropriately named the Tunnel Dam and is located just a bit south of the railroad tunnel itself.
The dam is quite interesting in that it's an L-shaped dam - something I hadn't seen before I came across it last April, the first time I went exploring the Taft Tunnel. The dam is obviously used by Norwich Public Utilities as there's a power station located right next to it on the Norwich side of the Quinebaug River but I couldn't seem to find any information on their website in regards to it so honestly have no idea how old the Tunnel Dam is or much of anything else. Sometimes you can dig up all sorts of good stuff with a web search and sometimes you get nothing ... this is one of those cases!
One thing I do know, though, is that there is a fish lift located on the dam just as there is one on the Greeneville Dam and a fish ladder on both the Taftville Dam and Occum Dam.
The picture above of the Tunnel Dam fish lift comes courtesy of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and their paper on Fish Passage Issues Impacting Atlantic Coast States presented at a workshop on April 3rd & 4th, 2008 in Florida. The 260-page paper is somewhat daunting and technical when it comes to fish lifts and ladders and the such but I got a pretty good idea of what they were all about and how important they are. After all, fish can't very well go jumping up and over the dams that are put on rivers and they need some way to be able to get upstream to spawn or their numbers will die out, right?
Norwich Public Utilities offers tours of the fish lift at the Greeneville Dam in the spring, something I'm going to try to remember come next May so I can check it out and most likely take lots of pictures!
In the meantime, here are a couple more pictures of the Tunnel Dam which was running pretty good on Monday after all of the rain that we got last weekend. I'll be showing you some more dam pictures I took soon but for now, everyone have a great Saturday and a Happy Halloween!
Before my adventures with the Taft Tunnel and a Providence & Worcester train this past Monday, I made a stop by Mohegan Park in the center of Norwich to see if there was any foliage left there to take pictures of. After the deluge of rain we'd had this past Saturday, I wasn't too sure what I was going to find left on the trees but I figured it was worth a stop to take a look around.
My last trip to Mohegan Park was this past January when there was snow covering the ground and it was lot colder than it was Monday! The time before that was in November when all of the leaves had already hit the ground but I'd just gotten my Nikon D60 and was trying it out; the geese were very co-operative that day!
Mohegan Park is one of those "hidden jewels in your own backyard" kind of things like I mentioned in yesterday's post about The Quiet Corner and even though it's not that far away, I tend to not get there as often as I'd like. Of course, when I do get there, I seem to take pictures of the same things I've taken pictures of before! Regular readers will probably find these places to be very familiar!
This is Spaulding Pond - obviously the centerpiece of Mohegan Park and very pretty. Off camera and to the right side of the picture, is a small swimming area that I used to take Michael to when he was little in the late 1980's and then the girls to on hot summer days in the late 1990's. As a matter of fact, I used to be taken there when I was little myself, probably in the mid-1960's, so it's obviously been there for quite some time!
Years ago Mohegan Park had a zoo and a monkey cage and all sorts of stuff but all of those things are part of the past now. I seem to remember that there used to be a rollerskating rink of some sort either in the park or nearby but that's one of those memories that I just can't quite seem to grasp onto. Anyone out there remember what I'm talking about? We used to go there for Girl Scout outings long ago.
Even though there were a lot of trees that were bare this past Monday and there were an awful lot of leaves covering the paths, there were still a few trees that had reached what was probably their peak of color - like this one to the right. With a beautiful blue sky in the background, autumn doesn't get much better than this!
When I lived in California all those years ago, this was the time of the year that I missed the most in New England. Granted, you get some color in California (especially in the mountains) but I'm afraid it just doesn't hold a candle to what we here in New England probably take for granted most of the time. Living elsewhere, I've learned not to take it for granted at all and am probably driving you all crazy with so many foliage pictures lately!
A friend of mine in the Air Force long, long ago once said that "Autumn is the blush of Mother Nature as she disrobes before Old Man Winter" and I've always remembered that as I think it describes the fall colors perfectly. I'm glad I got the chance to head over to Mohegan Park on Monday as the rest of the week so far has been rainy and blah; I'm afraid that by the time the weather gets better again, there will be no leaves left on the trees and the autumn colors will just be memories or images caught on pictures.
Speaking of images caught on pictures, I've got a few more posts to "blush" through in the next couple of days - I hope you won't mind!
As mentioned previously, my cousin and I took a bit of a local road trip last Friday in search of foliage in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. Sometimes when you're out traipsing around the rest of the countryside, it's all too easy to forget that there is beauty in one's own backyard - or in this case about 30 miles or so north of one's own backyard - and I was rather looking forward to exploring the back roads of the northeastern corner of the state in spite of the fact that it was somewhat overcast and darned cold for mid-October. On the bright side, though, it was my day off and it wasn't raining for a change!
I asked my cousin to do the driving so that I could possibly take some pictures along the way and she graciously acquiesced so off we went in search of an apple orchard, some photo opportunities, and lunch!
After plugging our destination in to the cousin's handy-dandy GPS unit, we drove up Route 169 to Route 44 and then over to Route 198 to Eastford and Buell's Orchard where I bought a nice bag of Cortland apples to make some pies, etc. I didn't really need that many apples and, as it was way too cold to even think about going out and picking our own, I didn't mind buying the pre-bagged ones in the least. A purist I'm not!
From Buell's we made our way over to Route 171 and headed north towards Bigelow Hollow State Park, a place I had heard of but never been to. The picture above is Bigelow Pond not too far from the entrance of the park while the one below is Mashapaug Pond, located at the northern end of the park. The name 'Mashapaug' is Nipmuck Indian for "Great Pond" so it seems kind of redundant to me that it's called Mashapaug Pond as technically that makes it "Great Pond Pond"!
Bigelow Hollow is located in the Nipmuck Forest, one of the largest unbroken forest areas in Eastern Connecticut and the second oldest state forest with the first parcel being acquired in 1905. Bigelow Hollow and the Nipmuck Forest currently total over 9,000 acres and provide beautiful hiking trails as well as picnic areas.
Not having a picnic lunch with us but definitely thinking it was well past time for some sustenance, we then headed up to Union - the smallest town in Connecticut - and the famous Traveler Restaurant (though truth be told, I had never heard of the place!). The thing that makes the Traveler unique is that in addition to a good meal, every diner at the Traveler can pick a free book from the many volumes that adorn the restaurant. Apparently the original owner came up with the idea back in 1984 as a way to thin out his own book collection and the current owners kept up the tradition.
According to the back of the menu, the Traveler gives away approximately 100,000 books a year - books that have been donated by libraries or picked up at auctions or flea markets or even perhaps left on the front step. In the basement of the restaurant you can find The Book Cellar with approximately 20,000 used books that are for sale. All in all, it was the ideal place for my cousin the librarian to have lunch! Funny thing is, neither of us left with a book!
Following lunch and a look through The Book Cellar we hit the road again and headed back down Route 171 towards South Woodstock. Along the way we made a brief stop at the small Union Cemetery so that I could take a couple of pictures. After all, you know me and cemeteries!
The sun had managed to peek through a couple of times during the course of our day as you can see from the blue sky above the cemetery but it wasn't quite able to stay out for too long. It was starting to get a bit overcast again as we turned from Route 171 onto Route 198 in Eastford and then cut across Old Colony Road to Schoolhouse Road where we stopped briefly to take the picture below.
As I walked around trying to get the right angle and my cousin waited in the car, I was rather surprised when a gentleman in a pick-up truck slowed down to ask if we were okay and not having any car problems. I thought it was awful nice of him and it just goes to show that there is still kindness in strangers. It's sad that even living in a not-so-big city like Norwich I can get jaded to that fact.
We drove around a bit more through Pomfret and Woodstock - home to such celebrities as Brian Dennehy, Renée Zellweger, and Carrol Spinney (think Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch) - but it just seemed to be getting cloudier and colder so even though I would have loved to have seen more of The Quiet Corner we decided to call it a day around 4:00 and made our way back down Route 169 to Canterbury.
Honestly, though, there were some truly beautiful areas that I would love to explore further but one of the places that I don't think I'll be getting to is the abandoned settlement of Bara-Hack which is located in the woods of Pomfret and reputed to be haunted.
Sometimes referred to as "the village of ghostly voices", people have reported hearing children laughing, dogs barking, mothers calling, wagons rumbling, and other unexplained noises. The story goes that the area was first settled by two Welsh families back in 1790 but was abandoned after the Civil War for one reason or another. All that remains now are just stone foundations, cellar holes, and a graveyard in the woods. Even the official website has disappeared as the land is privately owned and the owners don't want a bunch of wanna-be-ghosthunters trespassing out in their woods. I can't say that I blame them and I sure the heck wouldn't want to go out there at night but I bet there'd be some cool pictures during the day of the ruins and such. Too bad the owners no longer give permission for people to be there, I'd like it just for the history.
With that exception, though, don't be surprised if you end up reading more posts in the future from areas that aren't too far from my own backyard.
Those of you who are regular readers may remember this past April when I decided to go Tracking the Taft Tunnel in my neighboring town of Lisbon - the town that lays claim to the "first railroad tunnel in America". As I mentioned in my previous post -
"The Lisbon railroad tunnel, which is officially named the Taft Tunnel, was originally built by the Norwich and Worcester Railroad in 1837. There is some debate as to whether or not it's actually the very first railroad tunnel in America but it is most definitely the oldest railroad tunnel in America still in use in its original form as the tunnel and tracks are still used by the Providence and Worcester Railroad."
Ever since that first visit back in April, I'd been wanting to go back out to the tunnel and as yesterday was a beautiful autumn day with no rain in sight for a change, I decided it would be a good time to head back over. I wanted to see if maybe there was some good foliage to be found along the river near the tunnel and figured I didn't have too much more time before all the leaves were on the ground and the only foliage would be of the raking-and-bagging variety!
I parked by the side of Route 12, looked a little nervously at the "No Trespassing" sign, and after only a slight bit of hesitation began the short hike through the woods out to the railroad tracks. Once I got to the tracks I took a left and walked down to the tunnel, keeping an ear out for any approaching trains.
The tunnel looked pretty much like it did when I last saw it in April - which is probably also pretty much like it looked in 1837! The only difference was that there wasn't a lot of standing water at the north end of the tunnel like there was back in April which meant I could walk the 300 feet to the other end and get some pictures there.
With my friend Kevin's words of "you didn't walk all the way through last time because you were scared" ringing in my head - along with what I'm pretty sure was the sound of my heartbeat ringing through my ears - I started through the tunnel while all the time really, really, really hoping that a train wasn't going to pick that time to come down the tracks. Even though the tunnel is 23 feet wide, I didn't relish the thought of pressing myself against the side of the rock wall in abject terror while a train rumbled past.
As I got closer to the north end, the floor of the tunnel got mushier and some of the railroad ties were loose beneath my feet but I made it all the way through to the other side just in time to hear a rumbling that I knew was not coming from the river.
Oh good Lord, a train was coming! I quickly found a small area less than ten feet from the tracks that looked like the best place to be out of the way and sat down on a small rock just in time to see Engine 4001 come around the bend.
Now let me tell you, I like trains and I've taken more than a few pictures of them in the past but sitting less than 10 feet away from one by the side of the tracks is a bit - shall we say - disconcerting. If I'd thought my heart was beating in my ears earlier, that was nothing compared to the noise I was hearing now! Luckily I remembered to take a couple of pictures of the train entering the tunnel though I wasn't sure how well they were going to turn out as I felt like I was shaking so bad!
Finally the end of the train came into view - another engine moving backwards rather than a caboose as I guess trains just don't do cabooses anymore - or at least the Providence & Worcester trains don't seem to.
After the engine disappeared through the tunnel and the ground stopped shaking and the rumbling faded away, I shakily got to my feet and alternately thanked God many times over that I hadn't still been in the tunnel when the train came through while telling myself I was too old for this sort of thing! Still, I couldn't wait to tell Kevin the story later at work; he's a major railroad fan so I knew he'd appreciate the tale as well as maybe be a little jealous!
After taking a couple pictures of the north entry of the tunnel I began my trek back through to the other side a lot more relaxed than I was when I went through the first time as I was quite confident that another train wouldn't be coming through anytime soon. I didn't linger too long, though, just in case one of the engineers had spotted me by the side of the tracks and decided to call in some form of law enforcement. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to have come out of the woods and found a State Trooper waiting for me by my car but luckily that wasn't the case - whew!
As I sat in the car for a few moments before turning towards home, the blogger in me kicked in as I thought "This is going to make a great post! I hope the pictures came out okay!"
All in all, I'd have to say that yesterday's trip to the Taft Tunnel was quite the adventure but I honestly don't think I'm going to be doing that again anytime soon - no matter how pretty the foliage on the north side ended up being! Unless, of course someone else wants to go with me next time!
Two weeks ago today myself, Amanda, and her friend Darci spent the day touring one of my very favorite places in the country - the Gettysburg National Military Park. As I've previously mentioned, I've been to Gettysburg a pretty good number of times but no matter how many times I go I am in awe of the history that occurred in the fields and streets of this small town in Pennsylvania. It's been called hallowed ground on more than on occasion and it most certainly is that.
The girls and I spent the night at the Quality Inn which is located adjacent to a house that was built in 1833 and owned by the noted statesman Thaddeus Stevens at the time of the Civil War. During the three days of battle from July 1st to 3rd 1863, the house was used as the personal headquarters of the South's most beloved general - Robert E. Lee. In addition, the Lutheran Theological Seminary, site of some of the fighting on the first day of the battle, is in very close proximity to the hotel with beautiful vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. It's a lovely place and one that I had always wanted to stay at in spite of my status as a Yankee! Miss Bee would be happy to know that I have always thought of General Lee as a mighty fine military leader as well as a Southern gentleman and he has my utmost respect and admiration no matter the poor decisions he made at Gettysburg.
Following breakfast at our hotel, I decided that the best course of action for the girls to see as much of the battlefield as possible - as well as understand what went on there - was to buy a CD of the auto tour that told the story of the Battle of Gettysburg while it covered the more prominent areas. As many times as I've been to Gettysburg, I'm pretty sure I've not seen every area there is to see so I knew there was no way we were going to do more than scratch the surface with the amount of time that we had available to us but I wanted Amanda and Darci to perhaps have some understanding and appreciation for the battle that occurred and the lives that were lost in Gettysburg.
We spent probably close to 3-1/2 to 4 hours touring the battlefield if you count all of the stops for pictures and a closer look at some of the major points of interest like Little Round Top, Devil's Den, the State of Pennsylvania Monument, the State of Virginia Monument, and - one of my personal favorites - the monument for Lieutenant General James Longstreet.
It was once said that "Longstreet ... was the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably the best corps commander in the conflict on either side" - an assessment that I wholeheartedly agree with. General Lee's "Old War Horse" is another Southern General that I greatly admire and whom I think got a pretty raw deal from his fellow Southerners when he dared to say that General Lee made the wrong call at choosing to go ahead with his attack on the third day of Gettysburg.
Probably because of that, it wasn't until July 3rd, 1998 that General Longstreet was finally given a monument at Gettysburg located in a grove of trees in Pitzer Woods behind what would have been the Southern lines in the area of Seminary Ridge. Unlike most monuments to generals where the general is depicted on his horse on a large stone base, Longstreet’s monument shows him at ground level on a disproportionately small version of his favorite horse, Hero. As one of the very last monuments to be placed at Gettysburg, the monument's size and placement is indicative of the continuing controversy surrounding him. Longstreet is actually kind of hard to find if you aren't looking for him but I always like to stop by and pay my respects to "Old Pete" when I'm at Gettysburg. This trip was no exception.
Gettysburg National Military Park began in 1895 with 800-acres but today it is close to 6,000 acres and receives more visitors each year - over two million - than there are residents of Nebraska. With 26 miles of roadway and more than 1,400 markers, monuments, and memorials there's a lot to see and do at Gettysburg but I just wish that people wouldn't treat it as some sort of "fun" family tourist destination because it isn't. A major battle occurred there and lots and lots of lives were lost; sons and fathers and brothers and uncles and cousins and husbands - men who would never see their homes and loved ones again. Men who fought and died for a cause that they believed in and whose spirits may still linger somewhere in Gettysburg.
Nothing gets my goat more than to see unsupervised children climbing on the monuments and cannons or scrabbling up and down the rocks of Devil's Den without any thought to the reason that those monuments and cannon are there or the blood that flowed over the rocks and into the fields.
Truth be told, I got a little miffed at Amanda and Darci when they both broke into a major case of the giggles when we were at the Eternal Peace Light but I guess maybe that's just because I'm a stickler for the solemnity of the area. I know I need to relax but I guess I just feel that most people don't understand what happened at Gettysburg; I guess I feel like it would be the equivalent of laughing at the beaches of Normandy - at least for me anyway. I'm not saying that children should never go to Gettysburg but if you bring them there, you need to tell them what happened there and keep them in check. That said, though, I'll get off of my soapbox now.
Anyhow, I could go on and on about Gettysburg for a lot longer but I'll spare everyone the history and end this with a video of some more pictures of the battlefield and these rather sobering statistics:
At the end of the three-day battle, the 95,000 Union troops under General George Meade and 75,000 troops of General Robert E. Lee that met at Gettysburg had suffered 57,225 casualties – the largest number of any battle in the American Civil War. Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, and 5,369 captured or missing) while the Confederate casualties were more difficult to estimate. The most definitive work on the battle, Regimental Strength and Losses by John W. Busey and Dr. David Martin, cite 23,231 casualties (4,708 killed, 12,683 wounded, and 5,830 captured or missing).
Like I said, it is very hallowed ground; very hallowed ground indeed.
Plans for my day off yesterday included an excursion with my cousin Amy to parts of the "Quiet Corner" of Connecticut, or "The Last Green Valley" as it has also been called, in search of some foliage pictures. The area - over 1,080 square miles - lies within a Congressionally designated National Heritage Corridor along the Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers and represents the remaining substantial greenbelt within the urban and suburban sprawl between Washington and Boston.
I had my fingers crossed that the weather was going to be nice for a change but alas, it was pretty darned chilly, windy, and overcast for most of the day though the sun did try to poke its head out a time or two while we were driving the back roads of Woodstock, Eastford, and Union. Before we got that far, though, I made a brief stop on my way to my cousin's house for some pictures along the banks of the Quinebaug River in Canterbury near Butts Bridge.
The current Butts Bridge was built in 1937 following several other bridges that had been built near the same spot starting way back in 1728 by two gentlemen from Plainfield, Canterbury's neighboring town to the east. That bridge was swept away in a freshet (a sudden overflow of a stream resulting from a heavy rain or a thaw) and in 1733 another bridge was built in the same place by Samuel Butts, a Canterbury resident. Several years later, that bridge was swept away by ice.
A third bridge was built in the same spot but it, too, was damaged in the Great Flood of 1867. In the picure above you can see a bit of the old abutments that are still standing just north of the current bridge. For all that the Quinebaug doesn't look like a mighty river, it has certainly done more than its fair share of damage and claimed a good number of lives over the years, too.
Despite the fact that we have had rain hand-over-fist this year, the waters of the Quinebaug are currently very low. When I took these pictures yesterday, I was standing along a bank that had been underwater in July when I took pictures in the same area. Click here for one of those pictures if you'd like to see the difference.
Butts Bridge was last renovated in 1988 and even though it looks like it could use a new coat of paint, I kind of like the rusted areas - it seems to add more character to what could be considered a rather ordinary bridge if one didn't have a slight inkling of what it took for a bridge to finally withstand the waters of the Quinebaug River in this area.
Even though I'm still working on my Gettysburg post (heard that one before, right?), I'll try to get some pictures of our drive yesterday posted soon, too. After all, just because you aren't in New England doens't mean you can't enjoy some of the New England foliage, right?!?
Fridays are skies day and that works out great when I'm juggling time and not doing such a great job which is truly the case today! Still, I've got a day off and I'm going to try to make the best of it and that does not include sitting home on the computer! So what better than a nice quick post courtesy of a nice meme by one of my nice blogging friends?
Tisha's Looking at the Sky on Friday is a great way to share some of our skyward photos like this picture that Amanda took outside of Kutztown, Pennsylvania last Tuesday while we were driving from the Dutch Country up to visit Mark & Lisa. Despite the clouds, it sure was pretty!
Here's wishing everyone a very pretty Friday wherever you are and whatever you're doing. As for me - I'm going to pick some apples, take some pictures, and hang out with my cousin. Sounds pretty good to me!
Yesterday morning was my once-a-month get-together with my friend Rhonda and after a lovely breakfast full of catching up and coffee, I figured I had just enough time before work to try to hunt down a little foliage in the area before Mother Nature decides to wash it all away in the predicted rains for this weekend (yet again). She hasn't exactly been playing nice this year what with the winter that never ended, the summer that never was, and a fall that seems more like that winter that never ended but there are still a few nice spots around for some patented New England fall color.
These two shots were both taken on the Versailles side of the Shetucket River just on the other side of the Occum Dam. The way I look at it, if you can manage to catch the reflection of the trees in the water then you get double the goodness with foliage!
I'll be working my usual double-shift today but am hoping to get a few more pictures on Friday when I've got a day off as it's not supposed to start raining until later in the evening - I hope!
My very own residential Mistress of the Macabre has come up with a lovely little Halloween-style drawing that I decided was perfect filler while I'm still putting together my pictures from Gettysburg! What with the new blog look, it seems like an excellent fit!
Oh, and lest I forget Amanda has moved her own blog and can now be located at Inside the Mind of Delirium. She doesn't post too often but occasionally she throws some of her artwork up over there. I apologize in advance for her occasional use of an expletive should you go by - seems to be a teenage thing these days which is even worse if you happen to follow any teenagers on Twitter and some of their Tweets. Those seven words that George Carlin used to talk about ain't nuthin' anymore I'm afraid!
When I graduated from Windham High School in 1976 and went straight to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in
Texas it never in a million years would have occurred to me that I would eventually be living in Norwich, the Rose of New England. Funny how life likes to throw curve-balls at you! For years I made my living telling police officers where
to go but for the past 6+ years I've been dispatching ambulances instead.
Now ... let's see how well I juggle a stress-filled job with a 17-year old attending her senior
year of high school. I think a definite sense of humor will be required!
Goals for the year - find a new place to live, lose some of this extra weight I've been carrying around, hopefully get my finances straightened out, take a much-needed vacation (I hear the hotels
in Madrid are really quite nice!), sell one of my photographs, and maybe end this six-year drought of no kisses!
... about two hours, seven more bags, one cranky teenager, several passes with the lawn mower, and lots of sore muscles later I am happy to say that I think I am finished ...
... now to wait for the Norwich Department of Public Works to come by and remove the bags containing the bodies of the dead (leaves)!
I do love fall but this part I could do without! I think I'm finally done, though ... or at least I sure hope I am! 
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11/08/2009
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