Nice day in Niantic

July 9 - We planned an outing for today!  After the normal morning rituals, we packed up the camera and some books we were done with and headed to Niantic on the southern coast of Connecticut.

We really enjoyed this little town when we were here before.  They have several impressive

Yum!

used book stores and a great little seafood place along the shore.  We didn’t really check out the route that the truck planned for us and it was taking much longer than we expected.  I checked the phone directions and they were not even close!  It got us on a better route and we landed just a couple of blocks from Skippers, and boy, were we ready for lunch.

The lot was packed so I got out and placed our order while Bill waited for a parking spot to open up.  He did manage to get one

Misty day on the Bay!

before our food came out.  They only have outside seating and had removed a number of tables.  The view is across the bay and there were some sailboats out, although it was a bit misty still.  The bridge at the end of the bay was up when we arrived and remained so for a while.  There is also a commuter/train track running along the bay and we had several pass while we waited and during our delicious lunch!  I ordered us each a LARGE basket of clam strips and a SMALL order of slaw.  Bill thought it was too many clams but I was very happy with them.  We did BOTH finish off every crumb of lunch!  They sell scoop ice cream but we really did not room for it! 

About a ½ mile down the street is the Book Barn, which is awesome!  It’s a very sprawling

Where I found my book

place with houses, sheds, rolling carts and more, FULL of books.  Most of it is under trees and you meandering from mysteries to history to biographies to every kind of book you can imagine.  They have book buy back but we ended up not bothering.  I was looking for a couple of Mitch Albom books and they directed me to the 2 story building and I managed to get one that I was looking for!  They now have an entire

A section of the Book Barn

building of mystery books down the road a couple of blocks so we headed there.  Bill bought 30 paperbacks for $30 and one hardback that was pretty recently out for $7, so he was very excited.  I didn’t find any thing on my original mystery authors and have been reading a lot of his stuff so I didn’t contribute to that bag!

We agreed that was enough book buying for one day as we have no where in the RV to store any more.  So I found a nice mall kinda on our way back in Waterbury that we stopped at.  Bill parked under a tree and started on one of his new books while I got some deals at Bath and Body Works, Penney's and The Christmas Tree.  There was hardly anyone in the mall or the stores and it looked like at least 25% of the stores were not open yet or not opening at all.

One the way back to the interstate we drove thru Dunkin’ Donut for a horribly overpriced iced coffee.  You can be sure we won’t do that again.  It was 75% ice and if there was 25% drink we’d be stretching it!

It was a lovely day with no rain and we enjoyed the drive home.  On the way we took a little detour to see if one of our favorite ice cream places was still running and it was packed!  We will pay them a visit on our next set of days off!  We also passed a place with raspberries to pick that we will check on as well.

It was nice not to have to cook, as using the microwave is not really cooking!  We finished off the pickle steaks and some veggies and rice.  Not even many dishes to do!!

It was a normal quiet evening and we watched some Hallmark and read, as usual!