Southern New England Then Home to Oregon

Somehow the last blog on New England never got posted, so I'll give a quick update before going into our Alaskan adventure.

After Cape May we drove north to a great little beach town on the south Jersey shore called Sea Isle City which was great for cooling our heels (literally) in the hot weather before we challenged the Garden State Freeway. We then made it to Kensington where we hooked up with Gloria's old friend Diana Kauffman in Kensington. We spent a pleasant evening and night, going out to a diner (she said Diners are always owned by Greeks) for breakfast the next day. It was then on to New England!! Yea!!! Except we had to traverse the George Washington Bridge and a bit of Manhattan and the Bronx first. Connecticut was then a pleasant state, pretty, sedate, not too crowded, but with the most expensive gas we had encountered (until Alaska, of course). Our golf course was Elmridge in Pawcatuck, a good driver shot away from the Rhode Island border. We weren't allowed on the course until 5 PM because of league play, but were assured we'd finish in daylight. We almost didn't as the last two holes were by guess by gosh, plus we got an up close view of a very pretty little critter, all black with a white stripe down it's back. We finished in the dark at 8:55.

Next we motored over the border to Rhode Island, a great little state with about a million miles of coastline, which is amazing considering it is about the size of a large county in Texas. Gloria went out scouting the town while I played at Montaup, an old course dating back to 1923 which is semi-private, but very nice, including two great holes on the back nine with super views of the bay. I didn't play very well, but met up with a nice older guy (older than me!), who was an attorney and a magistrate and taught at Roger Williams University. We got along famously, and didn't mind the poor shots. Gloria in the meantime had found this great little takeout place called "Flo's Clam Shack," and you know what that means. We had fried clams, fried scallops, fried oysters, fried onion rings, and we balanced it with cole slaw. It was wonderful, though we think we sort of overindulged a bit. But, hey, we're in New England where seafood is plentiful.

On to Massachusetts the next day, we dropped in at Louisa May Alcott's home but she wasn't home. However, we enjoyed learning about the author of "Little Women," among others, and after passing Emerson's home and Walden Pond of Thoreau fame, we drove to Eliot, Maine to see Gloria's 89 year old mother, Janet Reimer. We were greeted with hugs and kisses, also seeing her older brother Michael and her sister Terry. It was a very nice reunion, punctuated by a Maine lobster dinner which was a bit more expensive than we last remember it.

Finally, we flew home to Oregon, spent the night in a motel, rented a car and drove home for two days to read the mail and then it was back on the road again, or back in the plane again as we flew north to Anchorage, Alaska. Hey, we didn't want to try to golf in November in Alaska, right? So, the land of the midnight sun at the summer solstice seemed about right.