June 5, 2008: New Haven and Mystic

Today we decided that since we had the car we should make a road trip. It gave us the flexibility to go a little father than we could in a day in the boat, so we drove to Mystic, CT. We wanted to see the Historic Seaport and to reminisce about being there once before when Laurie was a Girl Scout. There are several old sailing ships there including the Charles Morgan which is the last wooden whaling ship in existence. We ate at the S&P Oyster Company where Tom got the Lobster Hot Dog – a unique New England treat. Our table overlooked the draw bridge over the Mystic River and watched the friendly bridge tender raise it at least three times during lunch.

We found the Eli Whitney Museum which was housed in the armory where he devised the manufacturing process for rifles using the first “interchangeable parts”. It was his greatest invention. Eli Whitney, born in 1665 and attended Yale until he dropped out because he ran out of money. He headed south to find his fortune where he invented the cotton gin which combed the cotton seeds from the cotton fibers. I remember a cotton gin humming on the corner across from my grandmother’s house in Round O, SC, when I was a little girl. The cotton gin changed the course of business in that it helped the farmer’s produce enough cotton for export. He later changed the concepts of the industrial revolution by introducing manufacturing done with separated steps. He used power machinery driven by a water wheel on the Mill River. There was an exhibit showing how the waterwheel powered a huge turning grinding stone used for polishing the gun barrels. There is now a waterfall there and an old red covered wooden bridge which goes over to the stone house where his son later lived. Eli operated the armory manufacturing guns for the US from 1798-1825.

On our way home we stopped at the Peabody Museum to see the wonderful exhibit on dinosaurs. I wanted to see the fossilized skeleton of a giant sea turtle there that is over 10 feet long. The skeleton looked just like the green sea turtle we have off our coast in NC except that it was considerable larger. This specific one was missing his hind right flipper, but other than that was totally complete. Ironically the live sea turtle we saw in the Baltimore aquarium was missing the same flipper. The turtle bones were actually discovered in an archeological dig in 1895 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I wonder when there was a sea in South Dakota!

We toured around Yale for a bit whose campus covers 310 acres in New Haven. The school named after Eli Yale dates back to 1718. There was certainly no lack of funding for this well endowed university ($22.5 billion dollars – pretty amazing, huh). The architecture is really impressive, with massive towers and gates into inner courtyards similar to Oxford. We passed by the Yale Law school, begun in 1824 and housed in a building like a cathedral; and even the gym was amazingly elegant.

Tonight for dinner we went to Louis’ Lunch, a legendary New Haven landmark. The guide book says that Louis Laseen was the inventor of the hamburger. That he was the first one to chop up steak, press it together and serve it between bread. In any case, they cook their burgers in an interesting way – between two grills held vertically over an enclosed gas grill and did serve them on toasted bread, not in buns. It was a fun old place, Tom and I sat in a narrow little booth just for two, and the burgers were pretty good. After dinner the big outing was to the laundry mat. Tomorrow Laurie and Brian are coming for a visit, and we can hardly wait.