Favorite Stops & Cool Shops of New England


The very nature of a road trip lends itself to many stops along the way and some even "off the beaten path" places you would miss otherwise. The following were a few of our favorite stops and cool shops we came across during our drive...

Rich Farm Ice Cream Shop... located right off of Rt 67 in the lovely countryside of Oxford, CT. This ice cream shop is cool because its on a dairy farm where they make their ice cream from fresh milk every day. And it has some of the best ice cream we've ever tasted. The smallest size we could get was huge (see picture above). Prices were actually pretty reasonable, too. I had the Purple Cow and Butter Crunch ice cream. That day we enjoyed the hill country of Lietchfield CT and all the little villages that were along the way. One such village was Washington Depot which was a personal interest of mine since it was the place that inspired Amy Sherman Palladino to create Stars Hollow for Gilmore Girls. The Hickory Stick Bookshop was a neat bookstore to brows in Washington Depot.

There were several knitting and yarn shops around which of course I had to go into...
The Knitting Cove in Historic Jefferson Port, NY & The KnitWit of Portland, ME were two such stores.

Mystic CT, Portsmouth NH & Portland ME all had historic seaside downtown areas with plenty of restaurants and neat stores to enjoy by parking and walking up and down the streets. Possibly our favorite store we visited was Whyevernot located in Mystic CT just down the street from Mystic Pizza. When we first opened the door lovely aromas came from within to greet us. From candles to handmade soaps they all smelled heavenly and looked pretty, too. They sell art, jewelry, clothes, pottery, whimsy home decor & the beautiful children's book, Red Sings From Treetops, illustrated by a local painter, author & illustrator, Pamela Zagarenski.



Oh and last but possibly not least we did drop in at Yale University while traveling through New Haven CT. Although the city around the university lacked a little to be desired the university itself was neat to see with its beautifully historic buildings.

Locally: Blueberries of Daviess County




With Josiah snug on my back the boys and I picked blueberries this week at Blueberries of Daviess County. It's located in the lovely countryside of Utica, KY (just south of Owensboro). The bushes were loaded and the rows nice and clean making picking easy. All the bushes were low enough for the boys to pick the low berries and high enough for me to pick the top berries without having to bend over. Convenient since I had a 15th month old baby on my back. As to the taste... I froze most of them for smoothie making, but reserved a few cups to make the best blueberry crumble I've ever made. I credit it to the freshness of the blueberries.


Faves from recent photo sessions...



I'm going to take a break from my New England journals to display some work from Woodfall Family Photography. These are just a few of my faves from recent photo sessions. I'd also like to take this opportunity to invite you to check out my website if you haven't visited it in a while. And for any who have interest in booking a photo session for July or August now is the time to do it.

www.woodfallfamilyphotography.com

I love the way eyes can say so much in a photo...

The Coast of New England

Most of our road trip was driven on the highways and byways along New England's beautiful coast. We began by taking a ferry from Long Island, New York and drove as far north as Portland, ME. Making numerous stops at quaint villages and towns here and there. More about that later on. We enjoyed the beaches along Route 1 in NH. What an amazingly creative God of the universe to think up and create so much beauty!







John & Kay Craig pictured above. He is the Excutive Director of Youth Mentoring on Long Island. She is a school teacher. We stayed with them 2 nights while Matt did his training with John. In this picture we were getting ready to have really good pizza from a local pizzeria (Long Island brags of its excellent pizzerias). This is what I call dinner with a view. We had so much fun with them. Great people. Good pizza. Good wine. Great view.

Colors of New England



We just got back yesterday from our road trip in New England. It was an incredible experience filled with colorful people, colorful places & colorful food! I'm a bit overwhelmed with number of pictures I took during our adventure not to mention the amount of work that has piled up here at home while we were away. So I think I'll post a few pics here and there in the days to come and journal just a bit about our experiences in small doses. In case you didn't know we started on Long Island, New York where Matt received some ED training for Mentor Kids. Of which was really great and something Matt and I will probably be debriefing on for months to come. I joined him on a few of the more informal "training" sessions and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know John Craig and his wife, Kay. Other times I hung out at a coffee shop to read my book & knit while sipping on coffee all day. The perfect break away from "work" for me.

So first... here are just a few of the colors of New England...





Tutu Cute!