Our Everyday

Yesterday we went on an adventure. We headed out to the Great Swamp Refuge, us three girls. After winding through country roads we came across the headquarters for the park and pulled in to get started on our adventure into prehistoric New Jersey. Of course, when I thought of this "brilliant" idea I did not put much thought into it other than we could walk on some trails and see some nature. Well, if you think of swamp what comes to mind, maybe alligators or big mossy trees, but maybe like me the idea that the place would be overrun with mosquitoes did not enter your mind. So we embarked on our journey into the Great Swamp and about thirty paces in the little buggers start ATTACKING! I was not willing to retreat back to the car but visions of West Nile Virus were haunting me as we walked very quickly along the boardwalk trail above the swampy muck. As long as we were moving, they seemed to stay off of me but every time we stopped, a million of them hopped on for lunch.

The swamp was really quite beautiful, we have had many rain storms this summer so there was an extraordinary assortment of brightly colored mushrooms growing all around. We saw yellow, orange, school bus yellow, and red mushrooms as well as many others in assorted colors of brown. We wound through the trees on a boardwalk built just above the water and found a little clearing were the water was more of a pond depth and here was where we witnessed the prehistoric world come to life. There were dozens of dragonflies of all colors but the most amazing part was their size. The bodies were six to eight inches long with wings of equal length. Some of them were so large they looked like birds flying and feasting on all the mosquitoes that were feasting on us as we stopped to watch they buzz around the pond. After swat two mosquitoes off of me and shoeing one off Emma's nose we hurried on our way along the raised trail until we found the look out blind set up to watch birds. Sadie and I ran in and looked out but I did not see much so we ran back out past the wasps that were busy doing waspy things around the door into the blind. We were on our way back to the car now much to Sadie's dismay.
Once we reached the car, we took a little walk around the "meadow" in between the entrance and exit to watch the huge orange butterflies flitting about.


This photo of Emma and I was taken by Sadie.

I picked up a pint of gooseberries at Whole Foods last week to give them a try. I have only read about them in British cook books for the most part and probably something here and there in MS Living, and of course Joy of Cooking has some recipes but they also have how to cook opossum, squirrel and raccoon if you need one.
So back to the gooseberries, when I saw them packed in the green paper carton I thought they were so cute with their bright green grape shape and "just plucked goose" looking hairs. I remembered a strawberry/gooseberry recipe in JoC from my search for a strawberry/rhubarb pie. Turns out they are quite tart and I thought they tasted like a kiwi when I tried one. I put them together with the strawberries and baked it up into quite a nice pie. It was along the same lines as a rhubarb pie in taste and could have used a bit more sugar. It was especially tasty with vanilla ice cream, but then again what pie isn't.

This morning I finally baked up the blueberry pie I have been planning to bake all weekend. It is about the peak of the season out here for NJ blueberries so they are on sale everywhere I go. Can't wait for a slice of this after dinner.

Getting her toes wet

After a bit of a dip.

Friends on the train home

Waiting for the train in Kingston

Serious bedhead!

Sadie

Sisters

Look at Emma hold the pen!

Out on the beach, across the street from our hotel.

Here are our trip photos. Enjoy the scenery!


Train station in NJ

Waiting on the platform

Out the window

Sleeping babe

More wetlands

You know this east coast is really quite amazing. The more we travel around here the more I am intrigued. I loved Rhode Island, well in the summer. It seems that the winters could be a bit on the cold and bitter side. But being back on the coast was quite rejuvenating. There is some thing about the ocean that seems cleansing. The landscape is similar to New Jersey with all the trees and green but everything is shorter. The trees don't seem as tall and not as dense and one of my favorite parts that I saw on our trip was the abundance of small farms and old buildings. It is really a pretty state.

I am constantly in awe of the idea of people coming here 300 or 400 hundred years ago and landing without any knowledge of what awaited them. Here the forests meet the sea and they are dense. I remember something from a book I read for school as some point that the settlers believed that the forest was evil. Imagine the darkness that set in at night, without city lights or street lamps or even porch lights to help light your way. I don't think I would leave the comfort of my own cabin after sunset, that's for sure.

I really want to start reading more history about this coast, about how people came here and how they survived. Back then there was no million dollar prize at the end of the first 39 days, no doctor a phone call away, and no Jeff Probst to offer rewards of cheeseburgers or a video from a family member.

Some how when I think about what I am going to write for the posts all the words flow together and everything sounds so, I don't know, more eloquent...no,no, no. Anyway it sounds less boring than this original opening sentence. " This weekend we rode the train up to Newport, Rhode Island," followed by this:"Nathan had some work to do at a tennis tournament so we went along for the ride."
So anyway Saturday afternoon we hopped on an Amtrak and headed north for our destination mentioned above. First almost got lost a couple times trying to follow mapquest directions ( I mean, who actually is capable of judging distances down to a tenth of a mile while you are trying to read signs that are saying the opposite of the directions which are changing every two tenths of a mile five or six times.) But we were able to tour some more of New Jersey that we would for no other reason get a chance to see, since the neighborhoods we drove through might not be too inviting once the street lights come on.
And on a side note, on our tour down Park Ave we passed a high school that seemed as if it could be turned into a prison over night with the addition of some twenty foot high chain link fencing and some barbed wire if need be. So I ask, if you want kids to go to school, why build a school that looks like a prison?
Where was I? Oh, so we find our way to the station and unload all our STUFF and lug it all into the station and up to the platform and wait for our train that is running late. We board an almost standing room train and wait for a couple stops for a family of four to reach their destination so we could all sit together, thanks for the tip of a conductor. Then once we are sitting we are on our way and then there is "police activity" on the tracks up ahead so we have to stop and wait which delays a bit more. Luckily we did not have anything to get to in Newport other than some dinner.
We get into Kingstown meet our driver who escorts us to our hotel that proclaims itself as a historic inn on the beach. Well, it is not exactly on the beach but across the street from the beach and though it is recognized as a historic building built in the 1930s, once we enter our room it looks like some one went a like crazy with that padded hotel wallpaper that sort of has a pattern in about four shades of beige that are just all about the same shade and some crazy eighties "wind in the sails" boat border in bright colors. "Beachy" would be a better way to describe it. like how I imagine the dark wood, eighties condos on Crown Point to decorated rather than a quaint New England beach historic inn, but it was clean and comfortable and offered free coffee and breakfast in the morning.
We went out to dinner at KJ's Pub which was sort of a seafood restaurant and I got pesto and Parmesan crusted salmon which was really quite good. Sadie and Emma were enthralled by the wall of fish tanks that ran along our table. Sadie especially liked the hermit crabs. She found one really big one on the way out and he was crawling all around and then he just stopped. She asked why and I told her he was worn out from making shells all day so he was going to bed.

And going to bed was what we thought the mini people would be doing when we got to the hotel but of course that would be totally against the law of hotel Murphy's Law. Kids never go to bed any time near their normal bed time and they wake up earlier , or if you are lucky, around the same time they normally would. Some how they are capable of going in to vacation overdrive which over rides any sort of schedule you may have.

The next morning we were up and down to breakfast and then we began our trek up to the event that Nathan was helping to set up. It was a pro tennis tournament at The International Tennis Hall of Fame, home of the second oldest tennis arena in the world.

International Tennis Hall of Fame

Fila is a major sponsor and the adatto project is being featured in the Fila tent as it was in Rome. We walked a bit of a walk to get there, remember we had no car and did I mention no stroller as well. We had a quick tour of the facility and then the girls and I headed out to tour the town, which turned into me carrying everything including Emma everywhere and so the fun was lost about the time I reached the third store in attempts to find a cheap stroller. No such luck. We finally headed over to The Newport Creamery for some ice cream. By this time, ice cream seemed like a perfectly suitable lunch for Sadie and Emma, as long as it stayed the question that had been looming and falling out of Sadie's mouth every three minutes since we boarded the train, "When are we going to the beach?", and we could sit in some A/C and dry out. The Creamery was your typical diner with where all the tables are placed around the waitress run, for lack of a better term and the kitchen is in the center of restaurant. I enjoyed a greasy cheeseburger while Sadie and Emma ate ice cream and colored on their placemats. Emma sucked ketchup off some fries and Sadie refused any other food saying she was full. We had been waiting for Nathan to take a lunch break but I could not withstand any more toting and shuffling so we headed back down the hill to our room. Emma fell asleep while I was carrying her before we reached even got thru town and my arms were only holding her up because of pure will power by the time we reached the bottom of the hill and our room. On our way down, we walked along the beach in my desperate effort to cut off any tiny bit of distance by taking the straightest line to our hotel, and Sadie enjoyed chasing the "geese" (sea gulls). I can't believe how much she walked and ran that whole day, she was truly amazing. It had to be at least a mile each way and we walked around town a bit and then after returning to our room and Emma sleeping for another hour we headed out to the beach at 4pm and Sadie ran around and around for another hour and a half with out stopping. ( I love run-on sentences!) Here I should mention the wind! It was so windy at the beach by the time we got there that after a crowded Sunday afternoon almost all the footprints had been blown away. Our stuff was slowly being buried during our stay. It was truly amazing. Sadie and Emma had a blast but Emma was really mad that I would not let her run out into the waves like Sadie was doing. Neither of them could get enough of the beach, I really wish we had a whole week to just do that every day. We really want to return again when we are ALL on vacation and we have a CAR or most importantly we stay in town and bring the STROLLER no matter how hard it is to get on and off the train along with two kids, bags. computers and two carseats.

Finally after the beach, we went up and washed all the sand off in time for Nathan to be back and we went out to dinner with his co-worker, Lauren. Then we were back to the hotel where everyone was asleep rather quickly but not surprisingly. Now that leaves us with today, when we loaded up the hired car and headed off the train station at 9am to catch our train back down this way. It is just us girls here for a couple days while Nathan spends tomorrow in LA for another adatto premier in an event benefiting Parkinson's Disease and then back into New York for more meetings and adatto stuff.

Overall, I think we have discovered the joys of train travel. It seemed so slow but around here is can be faster and more convenient than traffic. We would love to do a cross-country trip with the girls when they are a bit older. There is more room than an airplane with no fasten seatbelts signs or lines for restrooms and a whole lot more to see.