Salem, Connecticut (State #29)-Witch Meadow Campground

August 23-30, 2015

This was a fun week in August of 2015. Witch Meadow Campground is in Salem, CT about an hour outside of Hartford. The reason we chose this area is because we had met another family at the rally in January that would be staying here for the summer.

The kids spent every minute they could together. As soon as everyone's school lessons were done, they were ready to meet up. The boys, of course, loved playing on their tablets and the Wii. The girls played with the dollhouse a lot and dressed each other up.

One evening both families went to the Waterford Speedbowl. It was great family entertainment. The adults paid $8 entry each and the kids were FREE. It was very kid friendly. Even some of the kids racing the cars were as young as Jacob!  The first race we saw was won by a girl Jacob's age. That really helped our kids to connect. They had fun watching the races but also just had fun hanging with their friends.

Other things we checked out in the area were:

Dinosaur State Park-Here we were able to see real dinosaur prints. They were pretty big and supposed to be some of the largest but I really think we saw larger ones in the Canyon Lake area of Texas. They had some really nice exhibits and had a couple of different programs.

One of the programs was on the dinosaur that left the prints and the other was about pythons

The kids could even compare themselves to a t-rex print!

Submarine Force Museum & USS Nautilus-This place had some really cool things. Of course these displays with a thousand buttons and switches were an immediate hit.

The kids got to peer through a real periscope and check out what was happening out in the parking lot.

And we got to see the Bushnell Turtle that we had read about earlier this year. It was the first submarine used in combat during the Revolutionary War!

We toured the USS Nautilus (audio tour) 

And just before we were leaving we were alerted that a real submarine was arriving into port! We stood outside and watched as it made it's way up the river with its crew on top. It was so cool!

Mystic Seaport-This is a living history maritime museum with ships and a village with various shops.

We were able to go aboard a few ships and watch them take down the sails for the day.

We also visited various shops with demonstrations like the cooper, the blacksmith, ship carver, sail loft and this building where they showed the steps in making rope.

It was a very interesting and pretty place.  You could definitely spend more than one day there.

Our week went by quickly and we were sad to leave our friends but later in December, we would get to see them again.  They would come to visit us in Austin!