Day 152: Hartford, CT to Dover, NH

This morning we learned all about Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, famed author of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. We visited his home and the accompanying museum. It was clear that Sam Clemens and his wife Livey were very wealthy. Livey inherited generational wealth from her family who was in the coal business and Mark Twain’s first two books were best sellers generating substantial profits. They used these funds to build a 25 room mansion for $45,000 in 1874. The inside of the house was beautifully decorated. There was fancy stencilled wallpaper and ceiling art in each room (except in the servants’ quarters), numerous paintings and sculptures, ornate carved wood furniture, and a gorgeous attached solarium just off the elaborate library. Sam Clemens and his family lived in the house for 17 years and he wrote several of his most famous novels here. Unfortunately, he invested heavily in a failed typeset machine leading to bankruptcy. At this point, he closed up the house and he and his family adopted a nomadic lifestyle in Europe, living in hotel rooms and rental accommodations. He was apparently one of the biggest celebrities of his time and considered one of the greatest authors of all time.

Stable and carriage house.

Library.

Alistair chilling with the literary great.

In the afternoon, we continued our journey North into New Hampshire, to just before the Maine state line. We stopped in Dover, New Hampshire to meet up with Shayne of New England Superior Oysters for a unique farm to table experience. Shayne is a small scale oyster farmer and he gave us a lesson on oyster farming and a tour of his boats and equipment. We learned about growing seed oysters in the bay, how they are shaped by tumbling, and how they hibernate over the winter. Did you know that oysters are hermaphrodites? Also that a single female oyster can produce up to 100 million eggs in a single spawning season? Holy cow (or holy oyster, I suppose)!

We were treated to a feast of fresh oysters on the half shell after the tour. It turns out that Seamus really likes oysters but everyone was adventurous and tried some. We also cooked some in garlic butter and onion to be made into oyster chowder later. 

We are camping tonight at the oyster farm and will get an early start tomorrow because we are going lobster fishing!

Day 151: Shartlesville, PA to Hartford, CT via Springfield, MA

It was a very wet day today. It began raining last night with huge drops hitting the trailer roof in a soothing lullaby. It continued raining all day today.

We left Pennsylvania (in the rain) early this morning and crossed the state line into New Jersey. You’ll note the photo of the Welcome to New Jersey sign is illegible thanks to the pouring rain combined with the puddles splashing up from the road. We didn’t stop in New Jersey but instead continued on through to New York. We passed over the Hudson River into the Bronx and headed all the way to Connecticut. 

Welcome to New Jersey sign. You’ll have to trust us on this one.

We finally had our first stop at the PEZ visitor centre in Orange, Connecticut. After a brief scare that we had lost Ian’s wallet (which it turns out we had not), we headed inside to see the world’s largest PEZ dispenser. We ran all around the store on a scavenger hunt where we had to find seven of the dwarfs from Snow White. We learned about the history of PEZ through educational placards and videos and saw the many, many crazy PEZ dispensers, from Baby Yoda to Sesame Street. Upon our departure, we were each awarded our very own free PEZ dispenser - Halloween themed - and several free samples.

After tomato sandwiches for lunch (Did I mention that we bought a huge crate of farm fresh tomatoes for $10 at the market a few days ago?! We think it was meant to make tomato sauce but we have just been eating them at every meal, lol), we continued on our journey crossing yet another state line into Massachusetts. 



In Springfield, we visited the Dr. Seuss Museum and Sculpture Garden. It was a perfect activity for such a rainy day. We were able to enjoy all of the interactive Seuss-themed exhibits.

We also had time to take in the connected Springfield Natural History Museum, full of rock samples and even another chunk of the meteor from Meteor Crater in Arizona! This meteor has really made its way across America. This museum was reminiscent of Ottawa’s Museum of Nature with the many taxidermy animals with painted backgrounds, though they had many more African animals here and many fewer dinosaur bones and casts.

We attended the 3:00pm live show at the Springfield Planetarium. This was an interesting live demonstration using the oldest star projector in the world, from when the museum first opened in 1937. The presenter showed us a bunch of different constellations in the night sky, as well as took us on a tour of the solar system.

Interesting fact: did you know that Earth currently has THREE “moons” orbiting it? No joke. We have our permanent moon and then two asteroids that (do not actually orbit Earth) but orbit the Sun in sync with Earth, making a looping motion that looks like an orbit from our viewpoint. The asteroid 2025 PN7 has shadowed Earth as a quasi-moon for about 60 years and is expected to stay until 2083. The second asteroid Kamoʻoalewa stays in close proximity to Earth and is currently being explored by China's Tianwen-2 mission. 

Another interesting fact that we learned was that during winter time in the Northern Hemisphere, the Earth is actually the closest to the Sun that it will be during the whole year. We are cold during this time of year despite our closest proximity to the Sun because the Earth is tilted the farthest away from the Sun, so we’re only getting 20% of the light from the Sun. Conversely, in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the Earth is actually the farthest away from the Sun than at any other point during the year but it is tilted closer to the Sun so we in the Northern Hemisphere get 70% of the sun’s light warming us up. This interesting tidbit led us to ask why then is the Southern Hemisphere's summer is not actually warmer on average than the Northern Hemisphere's summer, even though Earth is closer to the Sun during January (Southern Hemisphere’s summer). The answer is that the Southern Hemisphere has a much larger ratio of ocean to land. Water has a high specific heat capacity, meaning it absorbs and releases heat slowly, so the oceans act as a giant buffer, preventing extreme temperature spikes during summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Fascinating. With all the talk of an unprecedented El Niño season coming our way, thinking about the temperature cycles of the Earth was a timely learning opportunity.

We are bedded down for the night at the Bass Pro Shop back in Hartford, Connecticut. We had a cucumber explosion situation to deal with before supper but we got everything cleaned up. It is still raining, though we are all tucked in warm, cosy and comfortable in our trailer. We are ready to be rocked to sleep by the pitter patter of (still going) raindrops. We hope it’s sunny tomorrow.