By the time this commentary appears on the Gotham (City Networking, Inc. ®) website, Shelly and I arrived back from Mystic, CT to our home aptly named “Grand Junction” by Marisa who gave our home that “nom de 'net” on FourSquare. Marisa chose Grand Junction, a place in Colorado, from a Poco instrumental of the same name written by pedal steel guitarist extraordinaire Rusty Young that first appeared on their Pickin' Up The Pieces LP (which Rolling Stone magazine correctly included in its first ever list of 100 influential LPs) and later as part of the “long medley” on the live DeLIVErin' LP; Marisa often heard it in on my car cassette (and CD) player(s).

Shelly's pics will appear soon on Facebook. We found our way to the site of the original Mystic Pizza, of movie fame some time ago.

Of course, we visited the usual sites, including the Mystic Aquarium, adjacent Mistick Village and the Seaport. For me the highlights included seeing (in action) the “Boom Bridge” over US1 in downtown Mystic and Mystic River (truss-style swing) Railroad Bridge that rotates to create two sea lanes for sail and other large boats to pass along the Mystic River through to the Long Island Sound. Two viewings of both engineering marvels occurred during a calming early evening sail; really cool to observe the boat hands lower and raise and secure the sales. Even more amazing was watching the “deck hands” secure the sales to the last wooden whaling vessel in the world, SS Charles W. Morgan (1841).

The coupe de grace involved dining our last evening in original steam locomotive – The Essex Clipper Dinner Train – operated by The Valley Railroad Company.

One joy of the short trip involved almost zero need by this commentator to make any arrangements. Our friend, Abbe, planned and arranged the accommodations, the sail and dinner-train. I suggested the dining the other eves, all nearby where we stayed; one eve in another wing of the restaurant, a five piece band played rather well with a female singer taking the (Gregg Allman) vocals on the Allman Brothers Band's Midnight Rider; it made me think about my blog last week.

All in all an enjoyable foray to parts of CT never experienced but still glad that Mystic Highway took us home.