New England Trip 2012 – Day 6 – Essex, Connecticut

New England Trip 2012 – Day 6 – Essex, Connecticut

I started the day by spying a wonderfully colored growth of poison ivy climbing up the fence in front of my car’s parking space.  It was intermingled with some equally wonderfully colored Virginia Creeper. Not something that might excite everyone but definitely some more images to add to our on-line Poison Ivy Guide.

After I got over the euphoria of finding colorful Poison Ivy, we headed up the Connecticut River to the interesting town of Essex, Connecticut (Location).

I didn’t photograph the other side of the sign so don’t try to look at the other side :-).

Hallowe’en was quickly arriving and almost every lamp post in town had its Hallowe’en decoration so I had fun photographing lamp post decorations while my wife checked out the interesting shops that lined the main street of town.

 

After a while photographing imaginary creatures on lamp posts, it becomes a bit difficult to separate imagination from reality 🙂

 

Although we had seen plenty of colorful leaves during our drive south from our Canadian home, most of the Fall flowers were past their prime.  It was therefore, really nice to see that the flower beds of some Essex homes were still in excellent condition complete with butterflies and bugs.

The Village of Essex is located on the shores of the Connecticut River and at the Connecticut River Museum they have what looks like a nice maritime museum to visit.  Unfortunately for me, the museum was closed when we arrived so, aside from looking around the grounds and looking at some of the vessels at the docks, there wasn’t much for me to see or photograph.

  

The Essex waterfront has played an important role in the history of this part of the United States and continues to play an important role both for commercial craft as well as for myriad recreational watercraft. A short distance upriver from the Museum, the folks at a marina were busy getting boats out of the water and preparing them for winter storage.  This year, there was the added urgency of getting as many boats as possible to safe locations in advance of Hurricane Sandy.

 

Essex was a nice spot to visit with lots of interesting pre-Hallowe’en decorations, lots of colorful trees and flowers and a wonderful selection to vintage buildings to admire. Of course, for those who follow my blogs, there is the Essex fire hydrant :-).

It was soon time for us to leave and head off to our next destination, Old Saybrook.