Connecticut - Day 13

Mystic KOA
Tuesday, 13 November 2018

The rain started about midnight and kept up all morning, until about 2 in the afternoon.  And it wasn't just a drizzle but actual heavy rain, with strong wind gusts that moved the RV around.  A little yucky to walk the dogs in, though they go so stir-crazy in the RV they'll take even rain without complaining.

When the rain finally let up, I went down to take my first real shower in nearly a month, and it was wonderful.  This KOA doesn't charge for its showers, and there's plenty of room and privacy to change clothes in and enough hot water to feel really good.  Actually, the hot came and went and came and went, but it was enough to get me through even an abbreviated shower.  How nice to be using something besides boiling water and a kettle.

I stopped to check out the laundry room and found it packed.  All the machines were busy and lots of people were standing around.  Definitely not the right day for me to do laundry.

I'm finding it a real handicap not having access to local TV stations with their morning weather reports.  I haven't had that since I came to CT, and the weather's definitely a matter of concern this time of year.

As a substitute, I spent some time online comparing forecasts for North Stonington (where I am) and Canterbury (where the doggie day care is) and Hartford (where the state capitol building is), trying to figure out when I can make the trip. 

I learned that Thursday is guaranteed to produce snow all over CT.  Thursday is when the dogs are next scheduled back at day care, so I called up and moved it to Friday.  The various forecasts said the snow would taper off in the evening and rain would come and non-freezing temps, so I figured the snow would be mostly gone by Friday.  But what a nuisance trying to piece all this information together.

I also checked to see whether I'm going to have this campground problem when I go to New Jersey in December.  I was hoping it's far enough south that I'll have more than 2 choices, but either way I figured I'd better know what I'm dealing with.  Fortunately, I found 6 private campgrounds and quite a few state parks and forests with open campgrounds.  A relief.  I'll pull out the NJ map and make a few reservations later in the month.

I've finished all the Jane Austen books and am reading one my cousin Trish gave me.  She said she'd ended up with books that belonged to my grandmother and to our Aunt Alice, and she didn't know who this book had belonged to but was sure I'd want to have it.

The inscription on the flyleaf said, "Merry Christmas '27 From Thos Jr. [my uncle] & Barbara [my mother]".  My grandmother died the year I was born, but I got notes and gifts from Aunt Alice all my life, and I'm nearly certain this handwriting was my grandmother's and the gift was for Aunt Alice.  Momma would have been 5 that Christmas and Uncle Tom would have been 8-going-on-9.  The book is titled The Enchanted Barn, copyrighted in 1917 by the Golden Rule Company. 

It's actually a sweet little book about a pure (and poor) young woman whose family is so desperate for a cheap place to live for the summer that she rents an old stone barn.  Her plucky, hard-working and very Christian family make the best of the situation, and in the process transform the lives of the extremely wealthy family that owns the barn.  Yeah, I know.  But it's well-written and not as saccharine as it sounds.  And anything that's 100 years old deserves some deference.

This KOA is anything but in the country: the interstate runs so close to the campground that I'm really afraid sometime the dogs will frighten some little critter into running on the highway - and even that they'd get loose and chase the critter onto the highway themselves.  The first night the traffic noise kept me awake, but I got used to it in a hurry. 

Right here, we're close enough to RI to walk there.  It isn't more than a couple miles down the road.  RI has a little projection down in the very very southwestern piece of it, and where I am is actually above that little projection on the CT side.

I keep meaning to say something about Garelick's milk.  I started finding it in grocery stores somewhere in New York - it's a regular brand up here.  I mention it because the name always reminds me of some boys I went to elementary school with - the Harelick brothers (pronounced Har-lick).  They were unidentical twins (unfortunately for Larry, who was just a regular guy, in contrast to Harry who was very attractive - life's so unfair), and all through elementary school I'd have one or the other in my class. 

I remember in 6th grade our teacher - I don't remember why - but she got Larry talking about his family history.  They were Jewish and I think some of his family had emigrated just in time.  Anyway, Larry said their name hadn't always been Harelick, but they'd changed it after they got to the US.  He said it had been Garelick - and, of course, in the ghastly rude way little kids have, we all howled at being named garlic and embarrassed poor Larry.  But that story always stuck in my brain.  And I'm betting the people who own this dairy concern up here are related.  If so, they're probably fine people, because all the Harelicks sure were.  This story isn't apropos of anything, but I don't want to forget in a couple of years that I'd found this family, in a way.