History Lessons in New England

Some people think that this life style is easy and stress free. Well, for the most part it is. That is until you take a 40 foot fifth wheel around New York City!!! Of course it was a Monday morning too! For the most part the drive up the New Jersey coast went well. We planned our trip so that morning rush hour would be over. But I guess that around a city the size of New York, it's always rush hour. As we made our way past Newark, this is what we had imagined that all of New Jersey looked like. Lots of commercial activities and highways crisscrossing back and forth like a bowl of spaghetti.

We crossed the New Jersey/New York border over the Hudson River by way of the George Washington Bridge. Like all of the roads in and around New York/New Jersey, it is a toll bridge. I know cars cost $13, I imagine that the RV and truck cost more, but we used our IPass so I won't know the exact cost until I check my account.  Since our rig is so big, we had to use the upper level of the bridge. We weren't surprised to see a back up into the toll booth, however, once we were on the bridge, we expected traffic to move along. But it didn't... When you hear about bridges collapsing in Washington, and you are sitting with hundreds of cars, tractor trailers and trucks, in makes you a bit nervous when you are sitting there stuck in traffic!!! Despite the traffic jam, the bridge held and we slowly made our way on the Cross Bronx Expressway.  Looking at the endless high rise apartment buildings, I can't imagine having to live there. City life is not for me.

Like so many people that work in New York, they live in Connecticut...we also opted to stay in Connecticut. We stayed at a really pretty campground called Riverdale Farms Campground. It was in a beautiful rural setting and the staff was so friendly.

We started our history lesson with a geocache in Old Saybrooke along the Connecticut River. We learned about the Dutch who first lived in the area and the British who forced them out. There were also wonderful views of Long Island Sound. We could see some of the big houses and imaging what life must be like for the rich and not so famous. We took a walk along the newly repaired marina.

They had sustained some significant damage last October during Hurricane Sandy. Another geocache lead us to a marsh area where we saw a family of ospreys taking care of there new babies.

Our second history lesson was at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex. This area was a busy port in the early 1800's. During the war of 1812, the British came into the harbor and burned and sunk fifteen ships that were in the harbor.







From Connecticut we traveled a bit further north into Rhode Island. We are currently working on completing two bucket list quests. Rving in all fifty states and geocaching in all 50 states. So we spent a night in Rhode Island and checked that state off our lists. It was a short easy drive, so once we were set up in the campground we headed out for our geocaches.

We have found some of the most interesting caches in cemeteries, and this was no different. This cemetery was so old that you couldn't even read the names or dates on most of the tombstones.

The neatest part though, was the crypt that was open. Luckily, I didn't see any bones in there!

Something that we noticed as we were driving throughout the area was how green and lush everything was. We were both surprised to see so many areas thick with trees.

They other thing was the stone walls that you could see winding through the woods and along the sides of the roads. Oh if only they could talk, what they must have seen and experienced over the centuries.

We had a very interesting dinner at a haunted tavern. The tavern has been in use since before the American Revolution. Fred had a very weird experience while we were there. He got up to use the bathroom and as he approached it, he saw the door closing ahead of him. He went in, and did his business and hearing someone else doing their business in the next stall...However, when he looked around, he realized that he was alone....

The next state on our list was Massachusetts. We again took advantage of our Thousand Trails membership and stayed at the preserve in Sturbridge. We planned our stay so that we arrived on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend so that we could get a decent site. The campground is ok. We've noticed with most of the TT campgrounds that they all need some TLC. This one was no different. The sites are usually back-ins and at times just fit our big rig. We were glad we got there early, because I think we got one of the last sites. The calendar may have said that summer was starting, the weather however did not get the memo. It was cold (45-50) and raining (record rains for that time of year) the whole weekend while we were here. Thank goodness for heated seats in the truck ("heat seaters") and fleece blankets in the RV!.

Since the weather was so unfavorable, we didn't want to do much outdoors activities. While driving we saw a brown sign for Blackstone River Valley National Corridor. I grabbed my iPhone and googled it. It's a National Park with four Visitors Centers...  We headed for the nearest one which happened to be the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonstocket MA. We found out that it was along the Blackstone River that the Industrial Revolution in America was born. It was here that the United States moved from a farming country to an industrial country. We learned all about the textile industries throughout this region. I wish I had taken a picture of the homes in the area. Many of the older homes, were built by "the company" to house the workers. They were three story houses all of similar design with porches on each floor. One family would occupy each floor, with three families per building.

The next day we took a ride back into Rhode Island so that Fred could go to the Quonset Air Museum. They are only open on weekends, so it didn't fit into our schedule while we were there earlier in the week. They advertised that they had Nike equipment, so Fred wanted to see what they had and if he could get a lead on some more equipment for the Nike site at Everglades National Park. Unfortunately, all they had was one Ajax missile and no information as to where that came from. But since we were there, we did look at some of the air planes that they have or are restoring.

We then continued our education on the history of manufacturing in the Blackstone River Valley. This time we went to the Slater Mill in Pawtucket Rhode Island

Samuel Slater was the gentleman credited with being the father of the Industrialization of America. Back in the late 1700's, England had already developed machines for the textile industry, but they wanted to have a monopoly on this technology. So they made it unlawful for anyone working in the mills to leave the country. Samuel Slater had worked his way up through the ranks in a mill until he had learned the trade and was one of the chief engineers there. He told his boss that he was taking a few days off, dressing as a member of the lower class, he booked passage on a ship to the US. When he arrived in New York, he was talking to a ships captain from Pawtucket and told him what he did. The captain knew of a man back home who was trying to build a machine that would spin cotton into threads.

This is exactly what Slater knew how to do. So he went to Pawtucket and within a year he had successfully built the machine. He would become a very successful business man. They say that when he died he was worth over $10 million!

The museum had several different pieces of machinery that were used in this process. The cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney, which separated out the seeds from the cotton. The machine that combed the cotton into soft threads and finally the machine that Slater built that spun the cotton into threads. It was so interesting to see how the process works.

Here is Fred beside the water wheel that powered the equipment in the mill.

As part of the museum, they also had a homestead that showed how some of the more affluent workers lived. I never knew where linen came from... Its actually from a plant! The workers would grow flax in their gardens.  We saw how by hand they would break the outer layer of the plant to get the soft flax threads from inside. They then combed the flax until it was nice and soft and then they would spin it into treads on their spinning wheel. Most people back then would wait for the weaver to come into town with his portable loom where he would weave the threads into cloth. I'm not sure if we learned this stuff in school, but I can tell you that if we did, it sure wasn't as interesting as seeing it done in person.