Lobstah!

I read about Captain Jack's Lobster Boat in the Lonely Planet's New England book. Going out with a lobster fisherman sounded like an interesting thing to do, so we gave him a call. He docks his boat at the dock in the little town of Rockland.

For $30 each, he will take people out for an hour and a half  with him when he tends some of his 150 or so traps that he has in the bay.

Even though it was an overcast day, we saw several beautiful sailboats going out for the day --

Each lobsterman has individually colored buoys attached to his traps --

The traps are in waters that range from 20 to 65 feet deep, The Captain has a measuring caliper in his right hand  --

In Maine, you can only catch the medium-sized lobsters. The little ones and the larger ones -- the breeders -- are tossed back overboard.

This is a nice one -- it might be the one I ended up fixing for supper. The yellow bag hanging in the trap is the bait. He was using frozen whole ocean perch.

This little guy was going back over board --

The lobsters he kept had their claws banded and were tossed into the bait box with the perch until we got to shore --

This is the light on the end of the Rockland Breakwater that extends 7/8 of a mile out into the bay. The light is 39 feet high and is visible for 17 miles.

You can't get dinner much fresher than this! We paid $5 each for him and a buddy (wholesale dock price). The Captain's recipe for cooking: Bring an inch of water to a boil in the bottom of a pot; put the lobster in on its back; bring it back to a boil; steam for 10 minutes.

Two More States!

We left Auntie Violet parked at Sturbridge Campground this morning while we went with the Toad to visit Connecticut and Rhode Island. We headed south to New London and ended up stopping in Old Mystic Seaport. We made a contribution to the Connecticut economy by purchasing a half pound each of Maple Nut and Chocolate Pecan fudge. It was a cool morning, but there were already lots of people enjoying the beach.

I had been reading in Lonely Planet's New England Trips about the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, so we decided that would be our venture in that state. We took Highway 1 along the coast, then drove up Highway 138 and across the Newport Toll Bridge --

Newport is an historic seaport, founded in 1639.

There are nine beautiful historic mansions located along Newport's Bellevue Avenue that are now owned and managed by The Preservation Society of Newport County. The one I had heard about the most is The Breakers, built in 1895 for Cornelius Vanderbilt II.

Vanderbilt was the President of the New York Central Railroad and the head of one of the richest families in America in the Gilded Age.

This "summer cottage" is a 70 room Italianate-style villa, created by legendary American architect Richard Morris Hunt. It took only two years to build. The house is built around a 50 foot high Great Hall with rich imported marble and trim gilded with gold leaf. There are 20 bathrooms in the house, many with marble bathtubs that had to be filled and emptied several times in order to warm the tub up enough to bath in it. And of course, you could have your bath with either fresh or salt water...!

Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the house itself... The third and fourth floors have bedrooms for the many servants it took to run a mansion of this size. This is a portion of the ocean side of the house --

And this is the view from that second floor portico overlooking the expanse of lawn leading down to the Rhode Island Sound. The name, The Breakers, came from the action of the waves braking against the cliffs below --

After our tour of the mansion, we drove along the shore to Anthony's Seafood in Middletown. Anthony's is recommended as "THE place to go after a day at the beach." You order at the counter, then take your drinks and silverware and a number card to a table and wait for your food. I had some really good baked stuffed shrimp and Forry said his calamari was great. Just watching, I'd say about 75% of their food was take-out.

The nice thing about these nice long days (the summer solstice is this week) is that we were home before it was totally dark!