Clare had a hankering for pancakes this morning. She’s been craving them for days. Beyond the continental spread of yogurt and bagels offered at our inn, I wasn’t sure there was much more in the way of sit-down breakfast spots in this sleepy town. But Clare, who’s becoming a wizard with maps and Google and TripAdvisor on the iPhone, conjured up a few options, checked to make sure they’re open, then led us to one of them: Marley’s Cafe, a little alfresco diner in the Essex shipyard — a place that’s clearly popular with the boaters who come up the Connecticut River and dock here. And guess what! They have pancakes.
Marley’s is actually on a little island, and to get there, we had to be motored about 100 feet across the harbor on a little pontoon. A one-way trip takes about 30 seconds. There’s a guy employed by the boatyard to do that all day long, back and forth and back and forth.
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| We had to take a shuttle from this dock ... all the way to that dock in the background. |
When I finished writing last night, I closed up my laptop and prepared to charge it. But I discovered that the plug part had disconnected from the rest of the charging cord; I must have left it in outlet at the Dean Hotel in Providence. Without that plug, my charging cord is useless, and I have no other way to charge my computer. Once it runs out of juice, I won’t be able to write blog posts or post them online.
This could be a big boon for my free time! I can spend my evenings buried in a book! Or playing Uno with my family!
Or, not. Because the it chronicles the ups and downs of our family adventures and preserves this precious, fleeting time we have together, and because we get such a kick out of digging back through it and reminiscing about our escapades, I will never give up the blog.
Unsure about what there is to do in Connecticut, I had left our itinerary wide open for today. We used our free day to drive about 30 miles west into New Haven to explore the Yale Campus and — yay! — pick up a new charger at the Apple Store. The blog is saved.
In New Haven, we stopped in at the Peabody Museum of Natural History and were delighted by the exhibits on dinosaurs, mammalian evolution, rocks and minerals, ornithology, and especially a special exhibition on paleo artists, who, based on current knowledge and scientific evidence, bring prehistoric creatures to life through drawing, painting, sculpture and other media. What a cool job! Right up there with national park ranger, astronaut and NPR Central America correspondent. One of the artists featured in the exhibition attended the Rhode Island School of Design.
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| The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University |
New Haven has its own style of pizza — called “apizza” and characterized by a thin, chewy crust. So we headed to Frank Pepe’s Pizzeria, which opened in 1925 and apparently started the local coal-fired pie trend, for a late lunch. Even at 3 p.m., there was a line out the door. But a large booth opened up almost immediately after we got in the queue, and the hostess would only give it up to parties of five or more, so we were seated very quickly.
After a quick detour to an art supply store down the street — Natalie wanted to pick up some paints — we got back on the expressway to head back to Essex and got tangled up with all the other traffic heading up the coast for the holiday weekend.
About halfway back to Essex, we pulled off the road at Hammonasset Beach State Park. It had been a weird weather day — overcast and kind of gloomy — so we stayed only long enough for Natalie to crank out an admirable seascape watercolor painting, then headed back to Essex.
In town this morning we noticed a little flyer advertising a showing of the Disney film “Moana” at the shipyard tat 9 p.m. tonight. So we took that little pontoon ferry 100 feet across the harbor again and found a makeshift theater inside one of the dock buildings. Keith and the kids watched the movie and snacked on popcorn while I found a table outside and typed away on my freshly charged laptop computer.
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