Road Trip 2011: Day 10 of 20 (Hampton Bays, NY to New Port, RI)

Helen and Adam cuddling in the morning

I talked to the lady that owns the Ocean View Terrace Motel and she said they have owned the little motel for over 30 years and they only open during the summer. This is the house they live in across the street and right on the water.

Derek and I walked across the street to the beach. He found this horseshoe crab shell right away.

Writing a post card to the grandparents

Southampton - home to the rich and famous

Most of the properties had walls of tall shrubs around them and it seemed like every other property had a crew of landscapers working

The "public" beaches required permits

When flying to the beach house by helicopter

Beautiful lavender lined driveway

Lots of little "cottages" like these. Who are these people? When we would see some residents walking or riding bikes we expected them to somehow look different - as if having a ton of money would somehow make them look different

Windmills and lighthouses never get old

After passing a number of fruit stands, Helen couldn't stand it any more and had to have some fresh strawberries

It was hard to pick just one pie, but we picked the strawberry-rhubarb

The pie was pretty good, but we were expecting big chunks of fresh fruit and it was more of a puree jelly filling. I guess some people like that kind of pie, but I want the chunks of fruit and minimal processing.

Derek with a strawberry and Adam with an apricot

Swanky shops lining the town square

We drove out to Montauk on the point of Long Island

The Clam Bar and the Lobster Roll restaurants are pretty close together and both have good reputations for fresh seafood

Clam chowder

Lobster, lobster salad roll, and fish and chips

Adam was the one that wanted the lobster. Helen and I looked at each other, shrugged, and said, "What the heck - go for it."

Adam had more fun tearing Mr Lobster apart than actually eating him

We drove to Sag Harbor

We took a short ferry to Shelter Island

Lavender Farm

Waiting for the Cross Sound Ferry to take us across the Long Island Sound to New London, Connecticut

The ferry was delayed an hour because they had trouble getting a tractor trailer off during the previous crossing, so we had some time to walk along the beach 

The delay caused us to cross just a storm was rolling in

It was really kind of neat and rather beautiful watching the storm over the ocean

Mystic is a short drive from New London on the way to our hotel in Newport, Rhode Island

We ate at Mystic Pizza, a place made famous by the 80's movie starring Julia Roberts

Mystic looked like a cute town. Most things were closed but we did manage to find some ice cream.

Thursday June 9, 2011

With all the traffic coming from West Point the day before, we missed our ferry crossing from Long Island to Connecticut and just spent the night in the Hamptons on Long Island.

In the morning, Derek and I got up and walked across the street from our motel to check out the beach. Derek found a horseshoe crab shell that he cleaned up and took home with him.

We drove through the various Hampton towns on the way to Montauk at the tip of Long Island. Some of the areas were really wealthy and, even though the roads were public, gave off the vibe that commoners were not all that welcome. I'm surprised more of those areas weren't gated off.

We stopped for lunch at Clam Bar for a quintessential seafood dive experience. Adam wanted a whole lobster. He didn't eat much of it, but had fun pulling it apart. We also had our first lobster roll, but were dissapointed that it was really a "lobster salad" roll. On our trip we tried lobster all kinds of ways, and in the end, don't really see what all the hype is about. The meat is really pretty tough and not that flavorful. We read somewhere that lobster was considered a bait fish for a long time and not really meant to be eaten. They used to practically give it away. At some point, some marketer pulled a fast one on everybody and now we pay through the nose for it.

After lunch we drove to Sag Harbor, a cute little town, and took a short ferry to Shelter Island and then another short ferry from Shelter Island back to Long Island. We lined up for our ferry crossing from Orient Point, NY to New London, CT and had some time to check out the beach because the previous ferry had trouble unloading a tractor trailer and was an hour late.

The delay caused us to cross in the middle of a storm. The water got really choppy, the rain blew sideways, and lightning lit up the sky. I spent a good part of the trip on deck watching the storm over the water. It was beautiful.

We drove from New London, CT to the little town of Mystic for dinner at Mystic Pizza - made famous by the 80's movie. The place was an 80's time machine. The place was covered in posters and photos of the "Mystic Pizza" movie and stars, as well as other 80's movies and stars. We thought the place needed to drop the 80's hang up and stand on its own merit. The pizza was good enough and, after all, the place had already been there for many years before the movie came along. 

After dinner we walked around Mystic and had some ice cream before hopping in the van and driving an hour or so to Newport, Rhode Island where we spent the night.