Katrin & Jojo

October 5, 2008

On our second day in the beautiful state of Connecticut, we had a look at New Haven (which is just a really short drive from where we stayed last night). So, since we got up early, didn’t have breakfast and checked out early, we arrived in the city when mass was still on in every church and the streets were empty. Also, the tour we wanted to take to guide us around Yale University was scheduled for 1:30pm. We killed some time by walking around the nice inner city, already saw a lot of university buildings and a map which showed us just how much of the city is occupied by the university. When we realized that we couldn’t spend the whole time wandering around (it was raining too), we sat down in the nearest coffee-shop and read for a while.
The tour, like at the MIT, was provided by volunteer students. After a short film about Yale (like an advertisement video), we headed into the “campus”. And I can tell you that even after seeing the MIT, Harvard, McGill and the U-of-T, Yale was in no way boring or same-old. The architecture here was quite different from the rest of the buildings, aiming for old Oxford and Cambridge-like style. Nevermind that most of the buildings were erected in the early 1900s, and that in order to make them look that old the architect burried the stones and shingles in a river, and poured acid down his big clock-tower. The Sterling Memorial Library is what impressed me the most. It looks exactly like a cathedral, everything that is except the tiny details, like not having christian motives on the windows but little people reading and doing science. The inside is simply overwhelming, and so is the library further downstairs and the reading rooms. Katrin and I were more than just jealous.
The only downside is that Yale offers a liberal-arts education only, which did not sound like I was gonna like it ;)
Today it’s gonna be Mystic Seaport, and tonight we’ll probably be already in the state of Rhode Island.

October 4, 2008

So we left NY state this morning and headed south-west, using the I-87 south and then switched onto the Massachusetts Turnpike until we hit Springfield, MA. A few exits later we were in Windsor Locks, where the first thing we did was to visit the New England Air Museum near the Bradley Intl. Airport. Although I have seen my fair share of aviation and military museums, this one is definitely worth a visit. The number and variety of different aircraft (civil and military) is overwhelming, as are the sizes of some of their planes. They have everything from small one-man-helicopters, over Hueys, an F-14 to a B-29 Superfortress. Also the have small photo-and-text exhibitions and miscellaneous stuff like Jeep’s, a 1-megaton nuclear bomb and and a large amount of motors and aircraft-guns. All the planes look very well in shape, and not like they haven’t been looked after since they were put of out service. The F-14 was just 3 years “old” (decommissioned 3 years ago), and the oil was still dripping from it. A lot of the planes were in horrible shape (or in pieces) when they were donated, but thanks to a lot of volunteers and donations they were renovated and parts reconstructed in a lovely manner.

After the museum we first got ourselves a room near the airport (right in the flightpath of landing planes). Since it was still early we took the interstate south again and paid a visit to Hartford, CT, where we walked around town and had a look at the really nice downtown and the simply amazing State Capitol building (which was, unfortunately, closed).

October 3, 2008

After a nice breakfast this morning we got ready to leave, and the rain was pouring down. We left for the trail anyway, but missed the route (Sleeping Beauty Mnt.) so we ended up at Pilot Knob, where another trail starts. This trail was a little shorter than the one we had planned but marked as being “difficult” on the trail map (the one we had in plan was “moderate”). So we took the 6.4 mile trail to Buck Mountain (elevation 2000ft, a little less than 700m) and arrived at the summit about 90 minutes later (what a view!). Now, the trail wasn’t that much longer than the one in Acadia National Park, and it wasn’t even steeper, but we were really tired after just half of the distance. And I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not fit and have adequate shoes. Also it was kinda remote and not that much frequented, so that they had a sign-in book at the trailhead where you could sign-in and sign-out in order for people to notice if you actually went missing on one of the trails. We arrived back at our car almost 4 hours after we had departed, and since we were so exhausted and it was already in the afternoon we only made it as far as Albany, where we’ll stay for tonight (the town we’re at is called “Bethlehem”). We decided against crossing over into Vermont for the reason that there isn’t really that much to see and we couldn’t find any halfway inexpensive accomodation for tonight.

October 2, 2008

The Adirondack Park, located in New York state, is the largest park in the US (except Alaska), and covers an area of 24000 km^2 (for comparison: NRW is 34000 km^2). So it’s sufficient to say that we’ve been driving for a few hours today without leaving the park or even traversing half of it. When we left this morning the weather was still shaky with heavy showers from time to time, making it hard to drive. But as we entered the park the weather gradually got better, so when we reached the visitor information center (which took us more than 3 hours driving in the park itself), we felt safe enough to take a short 2-mile hike. After about an hour of hiking (Katrin was annoyed with me because I was whistling all the way, to keep potential bears alarmed) we returned to the road and drove the short distance to the beautiful Lake George, where we got ourselves a room and a nice pizza. Tomorrow we’re gonna try (given that the weather plays along) an 8-mile-hike nearby before crossing into Vermont.

Now, what else can I tell you about the Adirondack Park. It’s simply magnificient, and we liked it even more than the Acadia National Park. Good thing too that right now the Indian Summer is in full bloom. The simple idea that a strip of land as large as this one is inhabited by so few people and covered by so few roads is hard to grasp. Having to tell yourself to fill up the gas because the density of gas stations (or cities or anything for that matter) is pretty low is something special ;).

October 1, 2008

I suppose this is the post you’ve all been waiting for ;). Well, today my little honey-bunny turned 23 and what better day than one’s birthday to visit the lovely Niagara Falls. We left Heidelberg and drove straight towards the border and stopped on the canadian side (for those of you who don’t know it: the “big” part of the falls is canadian, and from their site you can only really appreciate the falls). Although I have been there once I didn’t really remember that much, but the main street towards the waterfront looks like Disneyland and the whole place is buzzing with (yes, again) asian tourists. Anyway, the falls were magnificient, and Katrin was impressed as well. We took some really nice photos and then crossed the border into the U.S. We had a lot of ground to cover, so we took the Interstate 90 across New York state which costs some toll but is the only way to quickly do the kinda distance we were looking at. At a service area (which is like the “Autobahnraststätten”) we stopped, filled up and finally found the Roomsaver booklets we had been looking for all this time. With this in hand we found an inexpensive and really good motel in Oneida, NY, which is where we’re at right now. This is probably the best motel we’ve stayed at the whole trip. Tomorrow we’ll try out the Adirondack National Park, provided the weather plays along.