New England Fall Foliage Welcomes Us!

Yesterday very early in the morning, Jenny and I boarded Delta airlines bound for Hartford, CT, with a stop in Detroit, where we only had time for a bagel stop before heading to our first class seats bound for Hartford.  On my flight I started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Can I just say, I'm having a hard time putting this book down; I'm so loving it!  It was beautiful seeing the fall leaves from the sky. We got our fancy chyrsler sebring, with rather uncomfortable seats and headed to our lovely hotel the Hampton.  I'm a fan of the Hampton.  They change the bedding every day, not just the sheets. After Jenny made sure there were no bed bugs, we had us a short rest before heading to downtown Hartford.  We thought for sure we'd find a great place for dinner.  Not really, the chowder was so thin with no flavor, I'm sure it was made from water instead of cream and butter, but the salad was refreshing.  After what seemed like forever trying to find an ice cream shop and almost giving up, one came into view where we each ordered an avalanche or as Dairy Queen calls it, the blizzard.  We went back to our hotel and enjoyed the RS broadcast from my computer, as I kept up with the BSU score.  Mom flew in around 11 and of course we were still awake when she got to our hotel.  It was kind of a restless night, probably because we were all so tired...maybe tonight we will be out cold.
This morning we had us a delicious breakfast.  The Hampton by far has the best breakfast of any hotel. My oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar was almost as good as what I fix at home.
We found the church house in the ghetto of Springfield a little late, because we are tourists, but we went and we got there...We got there just as the sacrament song was finishing, so we didn't want to open the doors and walk in.  Normally in our church they bring the sacrament out in the foyer for people who are late.  Nope, they do things differently in the Springfield ward.  So after they didn't bring us the bread and were sending the water around, I popped my head in and asked for the sacrament.  The man told me because we were late and not in the chapel we didn't get to partake of it.  I was like are you kidding me?  After the sacrament he came out to talk to us and I was like, well you denied us the blessings and that was so not what the Savior would have done.  He told us that he could give us the sacrament after the meeting.  Ha, I wasn't about to stay around and wait for it.  Better believe that bishop and stake president will get a lovely letter from me when I get back into Zion.  We found us another ward to go to back in CT, where the people were kind and accepting of visitors.  It took us out of the way from our mapped out schedule, but gave us a beautiful drive and the opportunity to partake of the sacrament.
The leaves aren't quite at peak in Connecticut, but they are still beautiful.  From CT we headed back into Mass, where we enjoyed cute towns and more fall color.  The farther north we have come, the more color we have seen.
We stopped at the Yankee Candle Village, which was almost overwhelming with size and smells.  They had a delicious restaurant where we had lunch/dinner of amazing clam chowder which totally made up for last nights, water-downed chowder.  I also had a half of a southwestern chicken wrap that was rather spicy, but oh so yummy for my super hungry tummy.






We headed west to the Mohawk Trail where it took us to the darling town of Shelburne Falls, where we had some rather cool photo ops. We also stopped off at the bridge of flowers, but as soon as we got out of the car it started to sprinkle and in a few footsteps even though it was sunny it started raining rather hard, so we only took a few pictures.  We lost light along our way north into VT and it was a rather dark, rainy drive the rest of the way.  We are resting tonight at yet another Hampton Inn and my traveling companions are already trying to sleep, so I better turn the light off...until tomorrow folks.

A cute old school sits the old school friends.

Thought this was a cool picture of the globe and the flag with the sun shining in.

Had to back up to take a picture of this one for sure!