Day 2

If I keep this up, you're going to be reading about day 10 sometime next year...

Day 2 - Bonnie's Super New England Trip

I think I mentioned that Marlene and I spent the night in a hotel in Brooklyn. It couldn't be too bad...the Cosby family lived in Brooklyn right?

Let's just say this: I've never shared a hotel room with a strange black man before*

That being said...

We slept in a little, but were still up at about 8:00 (6:00 a.m. Utah time.) We said good bye to Rob and Krysten and got on the subway once again.

Our first adventure of the day was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm completely enamored with bridges in general, but the story of how the Brooklyn Bridge was made is absolutely amazing.

Let's just say this: it is stinkin' cold up there on that bridge in January. I thought we must have walked about 2 1/2 miles, but looked it up upon returning home found out it's only 1.3 miles across.

Look really closely in the background and you can see the Statue of Liberty in the Harbor.

We stopped and took pictures along the way and my friend told me I'd better be careful because I looked like a gangster... (notice the one glove - the other is probably still riding the subway to and from the JFK airport)

Marlene and Bonnie on the Subway - we are pretty much pros now, so anybody that wants to come next time...we know exactly where we're going...

Bonnie at Grand Central Station

We caught the subway to Grand Central Station and bought tickets for the Metro North to Connecticut. We got on the train at about 12:00 p.m. and got to Connecticut sometimes after 2:00 p.m. Matt picked us up in New Haven (that's where Yale is...)

We headed back to Matt and Heather's house, ate a quick bite with the kiddies, punched Joseph Smith Memorial into the Garmin and were off again. We called ahead and made sure that the visitor's center was open. It wasn't, but the nice missionary said we could knock on his door and he'd give us a tour.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of the countryside since it soon got dark. In fact, I didn't even realize that we went through Massachusetts and that New Hampshire was a stone throw's away pretty much the whole way through Vermont...I am so observant. I was just sticking to what the GPS told me to do.

Joseph Smith Memorial was awesome! I wish we could have gone in the daytime, but they still had Christmas lights that were lit up when we got there - beautiful!

The nice missionary gave a great tour and we were joined by some people from Russia. He explained very well who Joseph was and what we believed and even gave them a Book of Mormon in Russian.

The missionary who gave our tour purposely placed us in the pictures so that we could see Christ, us, Joseph and President Monson. Pretty cool.

We headed back and when we got to the end of Vermont decided maybe we should try to find somewhere to eat. A little note about New England: I could only read the signs from the highway and try to decide for myself if certain towns were good places to stop. There is no indication of light or life from the viewpoint of the freeway because of all of the trees.

Let's just say this: we chose poorly.

We got off in a place called Putney, VT. We even found restaurants in the GPS and decided there must actually be life amongst the trees. We missed a turn and well...we got very, very lost. (Yes, Heather, we were lost in your car in a strange place.) The British Garmin lady turned us onto a dirt road, then another dirt road, then another. After about the sixth turn, we decided she didn't know what she was talking about and we used some common sense to get us back to a real road. I will never trust "the lady" again! Well, I probably will actually, but I was somewhat fed up with her "recalculating".

We did finally find a Subway that was open (Yay for authentic New England food!)

We even drove through Brattleboro, VT, which Marlene informed me was the headquarters for something about dairy cows. She'd heard of it, I hadn't.

We made it back safely to the Bailey home, exhausted and happy as ever!

*Note about the black man - Marlene's friend Krysten is dating a guy from Connecticut. He picked her up at JFK that morning and they spent the day in NYC together. Since they obviously couldn't have shared a room alone together, they were happy to let us share the room and have a couple of chaperones. They were glad that they didn't have to drive all the way to Connecticut that night. We were glad we didn't have to take the subway, Metro North and car all the way to Connecticut that night. It worked out nicely.