New England Vacation 1989 - Part IV

From Cara's Journal:

• Sunday, 10/8/89 - Youth Hostel - Litchfield, Connecticut

We were  awakened this morning by the group from Seattle as they packed their van to leave.  All 12 of them were screaming and laughing and carrying on.  Maya and I went back to sleep, but everyone else got up.  At about 9:00 AM we couldn't take the noise from everyone else and we got up.  The lady under Maya, and her friend who slept under Kim (she was from New Zealand), came into the bunkhouse.  This lady looked about 75 years old.  She says to me, while Maya is in the bathroom, "Having a Sunday sleep-in?"

I didn't want to let her know that my Sunday sleep-in meant sleeping until almost noon and than reading the paper until about 1:00 PM.  Instead I smiled.  Then she pipes up with, "Boy, these beds certainly shake.  Was that you over me last night?"  I told her no but explained about the bunks being hooked together and all.  She didn't give a damn and walked outside.  Oops.

We were greeted this morning with the fact that the group from Seattle stole our milk which we had purchased yesterday and never opened.  Kim bought more and she and Maya consumed lots of boxes of cereal.  (When staying at hostels you are responsible for the purchasing and preparing of your own meals)  I had a box, but these two?  They were little pigs and ate like we hadn't eaten for days.

We were the only ones left in the hostel by now and we left at 10:00 AM for Hartford.  Before we left, however, Trish let us move our belongings into the house and bunks inside.  There is something to be said for late risers. We went into Hartford and toured Nook Farms.  It was an intellectual and literary neighborhood where Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain lived.

We toured both their houses.  It took about two and a half hours and was great.  Well worth the bucks.  The neighborhood was started in the late 1800's by two brother-in-laws who purchased the 140 acre woods to develop into a community.  Over the years it became a community of reformers and activists.  There were politicians, painters, writers, feminists, and spiritualists.  The Clemens (aka Twains) moved into the neighborhood to live near their friends the Stowe's.  Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in this house.

In the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe we learned about her life as the sixth of eleven children.  I haven't read Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I shall add it to my list to do so as she seemed an interesting woman, especially for her time.

From here we traveled to tour the Lourdes in Litchfield, a shrine modeled after the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France.  Why not get a bit of European history here in America?  It was 35 acres and included a grotto, stations of the cross, several small shrines and a pilgrim hall.

The grounds were very beautiful, full of the fall colors and blooming trees.  We spent some time wandering around and then decided to take the walk of the cross.  This was a steep hike up, up, up the hillside, and as we passed some of the people hiking, many of them were praying and carrying rosaries in their hands.  I was too busy remembering to breath to do any praying, but the view from the top was gorgeous.

We ate lunch at a Subway where the boy behind the counter used his bare hands to make the sandwiches, and then we headed back to the hostel.  It was only 4:15 when we got back so Maya and I decided to take the hike that was behind the hostel.  We had been told that there was a 360 degree turn that showed a spectacular view of Connecticut countryside and that the trail was three miles long.  Kim chose not to go so we left her behind and started out.

The trail was called the Apple Hill Trail and it had been traveled quite a bit judging from the well worn path.  Being the expert hikers that Maya and I are, we figured that if we got off this path the view would be up over this hill to our left.  We found what we thought looked like a path and we took it.  We climbed over barbed wire and found ourselves at the bottom of a huge hill.  It looked exactly like the hill that Julie Andrews starts out on in the beginning of The Sound of Music.  It was huge and I thought I would never get up the thing.  Maya ran up it to show-off, and I let her.  She needs the exercise to climb up and down those 112 steps at Syracuse.

Sure enough at the top of the hill we found a spectacular view.  There was a wooden tower you could climb up to see the view, and it was a view to see.  We also could see the path that we should have taken to get here.

We left down that path.  The grass was very high and the going rough.  We came to the path we had been on earlier, and I chose to keep going.  We did and we came to a fork in the road.  A sign said, "Apple Hill Trail" with an arrow to the left and "Laurel Hill" with an arrow to the right.  At this point Maya began quoting Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken.  I decided, however, to take the more traveled one as I preferred the name Apple Hill Trail.  We trudge on for awhile until we came to the bottom of a huge hill just like the one Julie Andrews sand on in the beginning of The Sound of Music.  Yep.  That's right.  We had gone in a circle.  I guess Robert Frost knew what he was talking about.  Maya kept saying, "I told you so!" and quoted the poem over and over.  I told her that Connie would be proud of us hiking through the countryside quoting Robert Frost.

We finally made it back to the hostel to find Kim had tried to follow us, couldn't find us, had tripped and fallen, and then given up on the damn hike.  She sat in the car since the hostel didn't open until 5:00 PM.  She didn't think she had missed much.  We told her she had.

• 9:00 PM - Youth Hostel

We have all gathered around the kitchen table to hear Trish speak.  Her topic is the history of the building we are in at the moment.  One of our biker friends (most of the people traveling through youth hostels are bikers, which makes us feel very unhealthy as we pass them in our car) Mary Ann, had asked her about it earlier, but Trish said, "Yeah.  Could you wait until later when everybody is here?  I don't want to have to repeat it 80 times."  Okay, a slight exaggeration as there aren't 80 beds in this hostel.

It turned out though that the hostel was full, all the beds were filled.  Luckily, we were inside tonight as it was freezing once more in Connecticut.

***And that is the end of my journal.  I shall have to continue on with my poor memory and photos in the next phase, which will have to be done when I return as my scanner has now broken and ended my tale, so to speak.