Hammonasset State Park, CT
Blue skies and warm weather sure seemed like a perfect combo for a bike ride. Allaire State Park not only has a nicely wooded campground, but it's also an historic village circa 1830's, has a working railroad, and bike baths galore. We road for about 10 miles on the Capital to Coast bike trail and then decided to take in the Civil War re-enactment that was happening in the village.
Ned and I have seen LOTS of Civil War re-enactments by mostly Confederate camps. Today was a Union Camp and while mildly interested I didn't have great hopes. (One can only see so many of these re-enactments). However, today was quite different and way more interesting than we expected.
What first caught my attention was how elaborate the entire set up was. Most of the Union Soldiers had spent the night in their tents. There was also the women's camp, those who "followed" the soldiers, artillery units, officers riding around on horses, musicians, soldiers marching and several other period costumed actors strolling about. We struck up a conversation with the artillery captain and before you knew it, he "enlisted" Ned into part of his unit.
For the next 15 or 20 minutes Ned was given a very thorough instruction on how to fire a cannon. And let me tell ya, these New Jersey artillery men take their job seriously. "Soldier, only use your left hand to cover the pressure hole, you want to save your good hand if it should get blown off", he'd bark. "Soldier, stand with a manly pose and put your right arm behind your back", he'd say while Ned was cleaning out the muzzle. "We'll keep those Johnny Rebs on the run."
It took many steps to prepare a cannon to fire and a soldier would have to go back and forth behind the cannon since one was never supposed to go in front of the muzzle - for obvious reasons. Hard to believe that soldiers could do all these elaborate steps in 2.5 minutes during battle. Finally, the big moment came and "kaboom" the cannon was fired! Ned my hero.
We then watched the band play while the solider's marched. Ned was really interested in the instruments they were playing. One soldier was playing a 1860's euphonium, which looked like a trumpet but with levered keys and a cool bell shape. When Ned asked him about his instrument the musician said that it had never been worked on. Amazing!
Fortunately, this gal caught her soldier's eye and Ned decided to journey into Connecticut rather than continuing his adventure as a Union soldier. And traveling into Connecticut was no easy feat I might add! We were waging our own battle on the Jersey Parkway/Turnpike. Such obvious novices we were!! I'm sure we paid way too many tolls because we didn't figure out the express lane vs. local for quite awhile. We felt like cannon fodder dodging incoming cars and zig-zagging through the NY freeways until finally reaching the promise land of Connecticut.
We drove Highway 1 up the coast of Connecticut, driving past gigantic mansions until we finally reached Hammonassett State Park. This place is hilarious. It is touted as being Connecticut's largest beach, all 2 miles of it. It has close to 400 campsites, mostly all arranged in various circles in a large, grassy several hundred acre area. We are fortunately off the beaten path a little near a wooded grove. This isn't so much camping as people getting together in someone's backyard. The grills are going, kids are riding bikes, there are several baseball, volleyball, bocce ball games going and the campground host just now drove his ATV by...hooked up to an ice cream trailer complete with the bells ringing. There's even a wedding party with a DJ blasting it out at the beach pavilion. We've also had a couple of friendly folks stop by to check out Winnie. Fun group of people, Americana at its finest.
