Mystic, CT - 08/07 to 09/10

We make the fairly short and easy move over to the shore at Mystic Connecticut and get checked into a close by RV Park.

Then we headed over to Mystic Seaport - an item on John's must see list.

It bills itself as the "Museum of America and the Sea" and it does a pretty good job of that though the emphasis is on sailboats.

The Seaport itself is a re-created 19th century seafaring village of historic buildings.

But the crown jewel is the Charles W. Morgan.  She is the last of the great American whaling fleet.  She was built and launched in 1841 in New Bedford, MA (where we were just last week) and had quite the 80 year career.

She is now America's oldest commercial ship still afloat - only the USS Constitution is older (and we just recently saw that in Boston).

Dinner was overlooking the harbor at the small town of Noank, CT.

John remembers sailing out of Noank harbor on weekends when he was here for Submarine School in the 70s.

And we found this on the way to dinner - it was simply meant to be ....

Wednesday found us at the Submarine Force Museum & Library in Groton - the home of the U.S. Submarine Force.
This was where John did his initial Sub training and then later a six months advanced Sub school.

FYI - The small circle is the USS Holland SS-1 and the large one is today's USS Ohio SSBN-726.

The museum is now the home of the first Nuclear Submarine - the USS Nautilus SSN-571.

We had a good tour that even Mary enjoyed.  It's an interesting mix of technology from the older diesel subs and today's nuclear subs.

The displays both inside and outside the museum were really well done and pretty well covered the evolution of US submarines from start to today.

Three separate movies really explained things in depth (pun intended).

and Yes

He even bought the
tee shirt
...