TEXAS RANGER: NYC to Stamford CT and Surrounds May 30--June 6

After the Memorial Day weekend, we transited New York Harbor and up (? or down...it has two "mouths" and no "source") the East River, riding the current through Hell Gate just east of the United Nations building at 12 knots. I took no photos; as with all of our passages through NYC, it was dreary and somewhat foggy. We arrived at our destination in Stamford, CT by early afternoon, and docked at a delightful Brewer marina. We had decided, based on a fiscal study of the next week, to stay about a week, and visit surrounding towns that we had not previously visited by rental car. The weather clearly deteriorated after our passage from Ft. Pierce to NC early in the third week of May, and since that time has been unstable, drippy and dreary with small fronts passing through every other day. Each weekend morning at this marina, there is quite a gathering and casual "coffee club breakfast" on the docks, and we met many friendly and interesting locals who, despite the weather, are enjoying having their boats back in the water. Particularly striking was a 108-foot sailboat docked here. Its mast is 154 feet high, and it draws 9 feet with centerboard up; 19 feet centerboard down--definitely not a boat that would be at home on the Texas coast and bays!

It is interesting that the etiology namesake locations of many diseases are not too far away--Norwalk, Lyme, Coxsackie, etc.; we did not try to visit them. We did, however, visit Greenwich, Darien, Norwalk, Bridgeport, and New Haven. Each was quite unique, from the imposing churches and high-end shopping of Greenwich to the very industrial Bridgeport to the erudite New Haven, home of Yale University. The P.T. Barnum Museum, currently housed in an old bank building in Bridgeport, was particularly interesting, and the docent gave us a delightful narrative of the life of this entrepreneur (remember Jumbo, and Capt. Tom Thumb?). The timing was especially poignant given the closure this past month of the Ringling Bros. circus. Yale was replete with imposing buildings, and we toured their rare book library to view an original printing of the Gutenberg Bible. The campus is spread over a great deal of the city, and therefore lacks the cloistered appearance of so many Ivy League schools. We also drove through the Wooster Street area, their "Little Italy".

The weather has been slow to improve, and so our intended week-long stay in Stamford was lengthened a bit, but finally we are on our way east to visit more spots along the south shore of New England that we were unable to visit on our first trip to this area a few years ago.