Connecticut and Rhode Island

For some reason, the trees have not really changed colors in New York City. Or maybe the trees have changed, but green smog is covering them and making them look green. Who knows at this point. In the hopes of seeing some real fall colors, we rented a car the other weekend and drove to Connecticut and Rhode Island. Our view from the car window was very pleasant.

We visited several adorable New England towns, with churches like this one.

We drove through an area in Connecticut called Litchfield Hills, which probably had the best fall colors of all the places we visited.

We almost had to check our map to make sure we were really in Connecticut, and not Redwood Falls, Minnesota!

We visited Mystic, Connecticut, which was near the coast and proved to be another picturesque small town.

Mystic is home to Mystic Pizza, which was apparently a Julia Roberts movie. Given my total lack of knowledge regarding pre-2001 movies, I haven't seen it, but I can say the pizza was delicious!

Based on a recommendation from a co-worker, we also stopped by the Book Barn in Connecticut. He said he couldn't describe the place, but that we had to go there. I didn't know what could be so difficult about describing a book store, but when we got there, we totally understood. It was an enormous used book store, with a very "unique" layout. At first we thought this building was the book store...

...but there were so many more random buildings/areas!

A few new books...

...and a few webby ones.

A couple of goats for good measure.

And several cats. This one was taking a snack break.

It was definitely an interesting experience!

While we didn't find a Book Barn equivalent in Rhode Island, we really enjoyed the state. We went to Providence first, and luckily arrived on the night of the WaterFire festival. It was amazing! Tons of bonfire-like stations were set up on the river, and gondoliers rowed people through the festival.

During daylight hours, we went to the Federal Hill area of Providence, which was kind of like a Little Italy.

After Providence, we drove to Newport, Rhode Island. Newport had several historic mansions to tour, and we saw as many as we could in our limited time. The mansions were so enormous, it really was difficult to see more than a few.

Honey, I'm home! It was crazy to think of our teeny-tiny apartment compared to these palaces.

One of the coolest parts about these mansions was the proximity to the ocean. As if living in extravagant quarters was not enough - you had to be able to hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore, too, right? I guess I don't blame them!

Newport was a very beautiful town. We would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Okay, so we have an admission to make. We made it seem like we went to Connecticut and Rhode Island to see fall colors, but in reality, we searched online for Dairy Queens and noticed that there were several north of the city. Because there are no Dairy Queens in New York City, this was quite the draw. We have been tortured by these Dairy Queen chicken strip basket commericals that keep playing on our TV station, and it was getting to be too much. We tracked down this Dairy Queen that served chicken strip baskets. Obviously the set up was a little different than in Minnesota (it was in a gas station), but we didn't care. We happily shared a six-piece chicken strip basket, got a blizzard, and hit the road back to the city.