USS Nautilus

While we were visiting our friends in Connecticut, we visited a U.S. Navy Base and went inside the USS Nautilus! It was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine. It was also the first vessel to travel under the North Pole. There was a picture in the museum of the crew meeting Santa Claus at the North Pole! :P

Very cramped quarters, as you might imagine! These were actually roomy compared to some of the other rooms on board.

Dining hall. Those clay figures creeped me out…

Watch your head going through these things!

My dad is holding a phone-like thing that we listened to for our self-guided tour.

Mess hall. They had an ice cream machine!

I imagine that a room shared by six men didn’t smell very good…

Oh look! The cook! (that rhymed :)

Up next: The Freedom Trail!

Finishing Up

I worked at Joel's camp this week so I had to take a break from posting. I'll finish up the posts from our trip this week and then I'm headed to summer camp and Florida!

Exploring in Connecticut

After we left Lynn’s house, we drove to the S’s. They were our first friends in Florida! They told us about their favorite trail to hike in the People’s National Forest, so of course we had to try it!

It was beautiful up there!

This is a more accurate picture of us.

Daww.

Spontaneous dancing!!

Hooray for self timers on cameras!

There was a little waterfall at the end of the trail!

On the way back to the car, Mom and Dad came across this huge moth! Look how cool its camouflage is!

A few days later, the S’s took us to Mystic Seaport!

Who knew Connecticut was so pretty?

Me and Mrs. S

The men!

Ooh! There goes the drawbridge!

This funny little boat came through!

Of course we also had to stop and get ice cream!

Later that day, we got to go to the beach!

I love the beach!

We had tons of fun running around and tossing the football around. We also climbed all the way to the end of those rocks in the distance.

Cute little Samuel! He was always smiling!

Up next: The USS Nautilus!

Why, I'm his third cousin's brother's wife's step niece's great aunt! Twice removed.

(I would have posted sooner, but I've been having trouble uploading pictures to blogger so I had to figure out another way to do it. Hopefully it works!)

We have been spending a lot of our time during this trip visiting with friends and family. I met all sorts of people who I never knew I was related to!

This is the family of my mom’s best friend from college. We spent our first few nights with them in Virginia and had a great time!

Next we visited another one of mom’s college friends, Lynn, in Connecticut. Her husband and middle child, Natalie, are not in this photo. On the left are her daughters Hannah and Gracie. They were so sweet!

While we were there, we went walking around their cute town with Gracie and got milkshakes.

On Memorial Day, we watched their town’s parade.

This one is for my Grandma. She’s very proud of her Scottish heritage and I knew she’d want to see this!

That same day, we drove to my second cousin’s house for a cookout.

Mom, her cousin Jane, and Jane’s daughter Christine.

This is my Grandma F’s brother Billy and his wife, Pat! They were so sweet. :)

We had a great time visiting with everyone! This is all my Grandma F’s side of the family. It’s hard to keep track of how I’m related to all of them! All sorts of second-cousin-once-removed stuff!

East Coast!

Tomorrow we leave for our trip up the east coast! We had to cut this trip short two years ago because of my classes but this time we're going all the way up to Maine and Canada. We should be getting my computer back before we leave (yes, it got ANOTHER virus...definitely switching virus protection! But don't worry, I made sure all my pictures were backed up this time!) so I'll try to blog as we travel. :)