theDIBB - Road Trip round New England in the Spring, not the Fall! Day 10

Day 10 – The Mohawk Trail to Mystic, CT

Paradise Inn didn’t provide us with breakfast so we decided to have some on the road. First stop was back to the Bennington Monument! We’d been told we could use our stickers to get in the following day too as we were so late yesterday. I opted to stay on the ground this time though!

Will went up in the lift again and I looked around the park area surrounding the monument and went in the museum properly. This was also the site of the last public hanging, for which thousands turned up to watch!

The day was a good one for views again and Will took these photos ….

That’s me standing by the statue taking this photo!

Every day I had downloaded the next day onto Google maps offline, so that we could get directions without using data up. The whole of New England was far too much to fit onto my phone in one go, mainly because of the thousands of photos living there too … must see to that! So today was the most complicated of our drives and what did I do? I forgot to download the map! Oh well – sure I can cope just by looking at the location dot on the screen and working it out in my head.

The first part of the journey was to be easy – straight along the Mohawk Trail to Shelburne Falls and the Bridge of Flowers. The Mohawk Trail is a 63-mile scenic route and very pretty. It began as a Native American trade route which connected Atlantic tribes with tribes in Upstate New York and beyond. I’d spotted that there was a very tight hairpin bend with a café on it and this is where we headed for breakfast. It was closed!

However … about half a mile further on there was another café called the Wigwam and Werstern Summit Cafe with the most gorgeous views.

It was fairly new and was such a great place. Our coffees were individually brewed and I’d never seen this done before.

They also sold some really unusual items!

The phone rang and the owner celebrated that she’d been granted a liquor licence!

We stopped at various places along the Mohawk Trail to admire rivers and this gorgeous stag sculpture.

We pulled into Shelburne Falls and set off for the Bridge of Flowers.
There are 2 bridges next to each other – one for cars and the other a pedestrian bridge with flower beds and trees all along it.

It was such a beautiful place and kept so well. There were some wonderful plants and it was really colourful. It must be continually changing with the seasons.

After this we walked by the river by the Glacier Potholes Falls and had a coffee and the obligatory cookies in a Baked café overlooking the falls before heading back to the car. Very pretty little town.

Onward to Mystic and this is where the mapreading off the phone got a little sketchy! I was driving at this point and was getting a bit frazzled. The traffic had certainly picked up since leaving the Mohawk Trailand too. We missed a couple of turnings and eventually pulled into a small mall for some food at Hartford. We went into another Friendlys. Not as nice as the one in Bar Harbor but ok.

We arrived in Mystic about 5pm and checked into the Holiday Inn Express. This was a newish hotel. The room was lovely and very modern – a change from what we’d been experiencing so far with the previous rustic charm!

In the evening we drove into Mystic and had a look around before heading to the Mystic Pizza. When in Mystic ….! Loved the décor in here commemorating the film of the same name with Julia Roberts, which shot the place to fame.

Will had a Meatza Pizza – basically a heart attack on a plate with every kind of meat! I opted for a ham, mushroom and spinach one. They were delicious. I came out with a box but he finished all of it – and regretted it later as he felt so bloated!

We were lucky to see the Mystic Bridge opening over the river to let the boats through. There were massive blocks of concrete to act as weights.

More walking off the pizzas (I think Will should have walked all night) before heading back to the hotel.

We debated walking across to the Olde Mystic Village, just over the road, but decided to go back to the room first.

I turned on the TV and there was HBO with half of the End of Watch show about the making of the final series of Game of Thrones, followed by a repeat of the last episode! Absolute result – so we watched it again on a big screen!

By this time it was too late to go out again so we just watched more TV before bed. Tomorrow we were heading to Cape Cod.

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