The final cemetery
It had become the time to head for our final goal, New York City, where we should arrive in two days. The next day, we had to return our rented car at JFK Airport, as we wouldn't need it in the city. For this day we had planned to go south from Boston to New London in Connecticut and then take the ferry to Long Island and find a place to spend the night there. And except for two visits along the way, that was what we did.
After
having our car returned by the valet service, we left Boston heading east. As it
was a Sunday morning, there was practically no traffic, and when we reached I-95
it was almost empty as well. We made a singe stop to fill up the car (gasoline),
me (coffee) and Tim (sandwich), but beside from that we drove through to
Providence, Rhode Island. Just outside town we left the interstate, at Tim's
request. He wanted us to make a final visit to a cemetery before getting to New
York. Not any cemetery of course, but the Swan Point Cemetery. Tim is a fan of
H. P. Lovecraft, and he knew that this writer was buried in the cemetery, and
he wanted to pay his respects.
With help from our GPS we located the cemetery without any problems. Unfortunately it's a rather large cemetery, 200 acres large with more 40.000 interments. You can drive around the cemetery in your car, but that doesn't help much, if you don't know where to go. Tim had to use his phone to connect to the internet (something we usually only do when wifi is available as the roaming rates to Denmark are very high) and he found the "street" where Lovecraft's grave was to be found. That made it much easier to find, and when we got there, we took some photos of the grave. While on the internet, Tim had also located the grave of Civil War general and later Govenor of Rhode Island, Ambrose Bunside, so we visited his grave as well. Burnside was for a period Commander of The Army of the Potomac against his own will - he didn't think he was able enough to command an army. And he was right. He was appointed commander in November 1862, and after the catastrohpic defeat at Fredericsburg, he resigned his commission in January 1863, to be relieved by "Fighting Joe" Hooker, who also only lasted one big battle (and defeat) as well. Burnside, by the way has given his name to large whiskers. In Burnsides case, the whiskers was connected to his moustache, while his cheeks otherwise were clean shaven. Such facial hair was to be known as burnsides, later changed to sideburns. The cemetery itself is rathee beautiful, situated alongside Seekonk River, an extension of Providence River. It's a tidal river, and near the cemetery it's almost 800 m (2,600 feet) wide, misleading us to believe it was a lake, until the internet corrected us on that assumption. When we had visited the graves we wanted to, and enjoyed the view of the river, we returned to I-95 and continued south, still with almost no traffic.
The next detour we made at Mystic, Connecticut. We left the interstate to visit Mystic Seaport, one of the world's largest maritime museums. Dorte and I visited the place in 2008, and now I wanted to show it to Tim. We only spent an hour at the museum though, but promised to come back there, on our forthcoming New England trip (hopefully in 2016). In that hour we visited Joseph Conrad, a fully rigged training ship, built in Denmark in 1882, and used as a Danish training ship under the name Georg Stage until 1934, when a new Georg Stage was built. We also had time to visit some of the workshops before returning to our car, and continuing the last remaining miles to New London.
As
we hadn't booked a ferry from home (we had no idea what time we would be there), we were places on standby
on our arrival. Even with our two detours, and
visits, it was only 11.45 am, when we got to the ferry. We had left Boston a
little after seven. There was quite a few waitng in the standby line before us,
and even more of course in the lines for cars with reservations. The first
couple of ferries, leaving at noon and at 1, where almost filled up, and only a
few from the standby line got aboard these. But then what I believed was an extra
ferry arrived, as only cars from the standby line got onboard, including us. This
ferry was very small, with the only gate aft, and not very much room. Half the
cars had to enter forwards, while the rest had to back onboard. And it would of
course be the opposite on arrival. The cars were packed so tight, that all
passengers were asked to leave the cars, so only the drivers door had to be
opened when on board the ferry. As Tim was driving, I walked on board. Then we
both headed for the sun deck, where we spent the whole trip. It was sunny and
rather hot, and I had forgotten my cap in the car, but I survived. From up there
we enjoyed the large mansions, we passed heading away from New London and
later the lighthouse on Plum Island and Orient Point Lighthouse. Plum Island is
known from the Nelson DeMille novel of the same name from 1997. On the island is
the Plum Island Animal Disease Center of New York which was used for developing
biological weapons up until 1969, whichs was only confirmed by the govenment
many years later in 1993 even if claimed by critics for years.
Some even believe that Captain Kidd's treasure is burid either on Plum Island or somewhere on
the North Fork of Long Island.
When we got ashore, I could neter the car once more, and then we drove west on North Fork, enjoying the view of the white beaches near Dam Point. When we got to Southold, talked about finding Eva's and Bill's house (see the article A visit in Southold and the New London Ferry on the 2008 travel page), but we decied otherwise. Eva died in 2010, and Bill was 86 when Dorte and I visited six years earlier, so he may not even be alive anymore. Anyway we continued east towards Riverhead, where we were planning to spend the night. Along the way we drove through North Fork's wine country and through small towns with charming names like Peconic, Cutchogue, Mattituck and Aqueboque. After having passed the latter, traffic went to an almost full stop. The last five miles to and though Riverhead took us about one hour, and we never found out why. We found a hotel, got a room, and went out to look for a laundry which we couldn't find, so we gave on that, and decided that if we should need clean clothes, we would buy some. Our final visit was to a K-Mart where we wanted to get some fresh fruit, but no fresh fruits or vegetables were sold there so we gave up on that as well.