Town #57 New London

October 10, 2009
Upper Deck Café * Fort Trumbull State Park * Studio 33 Art Gallery * New London Antiques Center * Hygienic Gallery * Muddy Waters Café * Daniel's Dairy * Custom House Marine Museum

We started at the Upper Deck Café on Pequot Avenue, for breakfast. It’s definitely a place the locals go, and we liked the friendly service and menu choices. I had eggs Benedict with a sausage patty and sausage gravy—different, but quite tasty. Jan had a biscuit and sausage gravy, also very good. (Total with coffee and tip, $20)

We had planned to visit the Hempsted Houses and take in their Annual Harvest Festival, but since the event didn’t begin till 11 a.m., we had time, we figured, to visit Ft. Trumbull State Park. We’d heard about it over the years, and felt obligated to learn about its history. Finding the fort was easy, as was parking. We weren’t sure what we’d see for the $10 per person fee at the visitor’s center, but we took a chance and bought our passes. The visiting season ends Columbus Day except for special groups. We got so involved in the exhibits, that we spent almost three hours there! (We skipped the Hempsted Houses.) ($20)

This quote from their web site nicely explains the Visitor's Center:

"The Center contains state of the art multimedia theaters, computer touch screen interactive exhibits, 3-D models, and extensive graphics and text panels. This one of a kind center depicts over 225 years of military history and technological advances from the Revolutionary War to the Cold War. Some of the main themes of the Visitor Center are the September 6, 1781, attack by the British under the command of Benedict Arnold, the U-boat menace during World War II, and the anti-submarine efforts during the Cold War."

The Friends of Fort Trumbull website details a summary of the history of the fort well.

The first floor covered the fort’s Revolutionary War history and mentioned three systems of the fort’s evolution. Each evolution of coastal forts eventually proved inadequate as military firepower developed. First system forts were ultimately destroyed by inadequate rear defense, as guns were pointed toward the sea or rivers and harbors. Second system forts suffered from the development of larger and larger smooth bore cannon. And third system forts couldn’t survive even larger and more powerful rifle bore cannon. The second floor covered the role of the fort in the world wars (developing sonar to detect submarines), in cold war research (including the development of SONAR), in the presence of the Coast Guard at the fort, and finally as a branch campus for UConn.

The fort overlooks the Thames River. The Coast Guard barque Eagle is berthed there and Electric Boat and Fort Griswold are directly across the river. Fort Griswold also played a role in defending New London. We strolled around the granite walls of the fort and appreciated the commanding view as a defense of the river. We bought two laminated bookmarks with the CT lighthouses at the gift shop. ($5)

We headed to Bank Street and parked (street parking is free) in front of Studio 33 Art & Frame Gallery which we visited briefly. We then went to New London Antiques Center and spent a little over an hour there. It’s a huge consignment store with antiques and collectibles similar to those found in Collinsville and Pomfret. Jan made a purchase (two pins and a future gift for Bob, $22) and I was tempted by a 38” ship’s wheel, but after considering it, decided against buying it for a dining room chandelier.
We investigated Hygienic Art. Apparently it has a bit of a reputation for being a little risqué, but we didn’t find that for the present exhibit, “Portraits of the Feminine Divine,” which were mostly mythological representations of the feminine divine, and primarily the work of one artist. Interesting, but we didn’t spend too long there.

We were ready for a break and headed to the Muddy Waters Café. The place looks old and fits in with the old section of Bank Street. There was inside or outside dining, or take out. My ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on a Kaiser roll, and Jan’s vegetable soup/half BLT sandwich on a croissant were excellent and very generous. I also enjoyed a café mocha, Jan a hot cider. The pastries looked delicious, but we held back on those as we had spotted an ice cream shop up the street. ($23)

We walked down to the waterfront, crossing the Amtrak tracks to the pier where the Fisher’s Island and Block Island ferries arrive and depart. Nicely rebuilt, but not a lot to see. We stopped in the train station, which looked like it could capitalize nicely on its architecture, but the interior was plain and strictly functional. As we headed back near State Street we spotted a huge mural on the side of a building and noticed the artist’s name was Wyland. He’s the marine artist whose gallery we visited in Key West. His work is absolutely beautiful and extremely high end. In 1993 he painted 100 such murals in all 13 states on the East Coast “to heighten awareness about the plight of whales and other sea creatures. On the way back toward the car we checked out Daniel’s Dairy for ice cream cones, eating them there. ($7)

Next we visited the Custom House Maritime Museum. Jan was getting tired and chose to wait in the car. I contributed the suggested $5 donation and wandered around. Various maritime exhibits included knot boards, an oyster exhibit, model boats and ships, etc. I was listening to the end of an explanation of the Fourth-order Fresnel lens the museum procured from the New London Ledge lighthouse (which we toured a few years ago). The family moved on and I chatted at length with the curator about lighthouses. We moved on to ship models and he explained those in the museum. At one point he invited me to the closed-off library revealing a neat collection of intricately scaled model steamships, and explained how the man who made them spent about a year on each. They were amazing in their small size and incredible detail. The website subtly reveals one of these on the library shelf. There is also quite a collection of information on the La Amistad history. We did a harbor cruise on the reproduction of the ship a few years ago and the UCC is quite involved in its history as well.

We decided to head home so we put the GPS in the blue highways mode (no freeways) and enjoyed a scenic ride home. (Bob)