Swamp Meadow Covered Bridge
Gillette Castle
Coddiwomple: “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination”. Melinda lives by this term. “Coddiwomple” was made for her. Melinda, Gizmo, and I rode the bikes down to Waterford to return a motorcycle fairing. We actually went to West Haven (about 17 miles east of Waterford) by accident but it enabled us to take the ferry across at Gillette Castle. Melinda loves a good ferry ride! The rides there were little-used, curvy back roads with a shady canopy of trees. Her favorite kind! After the ferry ride and a quick course correction, we returned the fairing (a bit large to carry on the back of a Can-Am) and then wandered over to Mystic, CT to get some pizza (yeah, I know, but she has a Julia Roberts thing!) From there we meandered back to the RV, about 150 miles round trip. The ride is sprinkled with old barns, great old houses, and some very scenic vistas. Gizmo loved the ride (he has his own little carrier on the back of a bike – which he immediately lays down in and falls asleep), but was tuckered out when he got home. Me too.
Change
in Direction
Ferry ride
Starting with this blog article, we are going to change the style of the writing a bit. At first the goal was to be entertaining and share our full-time RV adventures. That’s still our goals, but now that we are 4.5 years into this, all of the places are starting to blend together in our (Melinda’s aging) memories, so we decided to make some of the article more factual so that we can remind ourselves later about places and things we liked (or not). We’re going to try and go back through some of the old posts to add some details, but, like I said, after a 4.5 years, that’s a lot of posts, so it may take a while.
Bridging the Gap
Swamp Meadow Covered Bridge
One coddiwomple found us at the Swamp Meadow Covered Bridge (actually listed as one of the “fun” things to do near Chaplin. Very low threshold for fun here.) It was kind of cool though. I had taken some smoke grenades (don’t ask) to set off behind the bridge to get some great special effects photos, but didn’t realize that this was still a functioning, well traveled bridge. So, no smoke.
Frog Rock
One of the things here is to paint the big boulders beside the road. Eagles, whatever. The rocks only marginally look like what they are being painted as, but the locals will do whatever they can to generate some interest in something. Just so happens their target market is my wife. So, we ate lunch at Frog Rock. It’s a little wooden shack/stand that serves some outrageously priced clams and burgers and such. It was on way home from the bridge (if you drive about 10 miles out of your way).
Foxwoods & Mohegun Sun
Every other day or so, during our stay in Chaplin, I would ride the bike down to Foxwoods Casino (or Mohegun Sun Casino) to play some poker. It’s about 30 miles each way, but because the back roads are so curvy and speed limited, it takes about an hour to ride. I did fairly well at the tables, but the dealers barely speak English, make a lot of errors, and are some of the worst in the country. The players are all locals and the same guys every time. You do NOT want to ride home after dark because these back roads have NO street lights and as mentioned, are curvy as hell. You’ll be flying along and suddenly the road went LEFT. Or a deer will jump out in front of you. Or some yahoo will take a corner short. Fun. A sweeping, shady, country drive in the daytime is a great coddiwomple, but at night, not so much.
DATE: June 14 – July 14, 2023 1 MONTH
RV PARK: Nickerson RV Park
THOUSAND TRAILS: N $800/mon back-in w/overflow storage on the hill
ADVENTURES: Mystic, Foxwoods
CITY: Chaplin, CT
RETURN: maybe, green, grassy, nice people, campfires, great cycle roads, casinos
NOTE: Replaced RV house batteries, replaced headlight fairings on Can-Am
RVonTheRoadYet.com is a blog to keep our friends and family informed of our latest adventures or misadventures. We are NOT RV professionals, doctors, lawyers, or travel guides. We are a couple of people who have decided to embrace the full-time RV lifestyle of idiots and gypsies.