On our way to Connecticut this past Monday our first stop was the Elmwood Cemetery.

PBS once did a History Detective special on Cemeteries. Our personal history dates back 51 years and we are forever exploring final resting places when traveling. I know, it’s a dying interest, but we try to keep it alive. Join us on this grand day in August as we travel east for the day while celebrating our 51’st honeymoon.

Married in 1965, and the #1 song of the year was, “My Girl” by The Temptations.  Here she is standing in front of the famous “Mystic Pizza.”

I went out for breakfast with my brother in-law John yesterday morning after dropping my girl off at the Rails to Trails for her 10K plus step morning. She’s a walking fool, ask anyone in Allen. Over an old-time favorite of Corned Beef Hash, two eggs sunny side up, home fries and toast we roasted the world of government and politics. My goodness, do we have all the answers. A combined 141 years of experience, way more than either candidate this year.

Oh, if the nutritionist/Dietician at Cardiac Rehab could see me now. Hey, I’m on a honeymoon remember.

By the second cup neither of us could name a worthy candidate. We did conclude that one’s a Liar and one’s a Bozo.

After Breakfast

I said good bye to John and headed out to find my girl an hour and a half later. Thanks to the Technocrats for https://www.roadid.com/

I knew right where she was, picked her up and headed back to our accommodations to plan our us-day. After a quick thought of a place or two we decided on Mystic,Connecticut, located 53 miles to the east on Long Island Sound.

Our first stop was AAA, we exchanged some US money, for Canadian and then continued east to the Sound. We have a new Garmin GPS to get us around but the old familiarity of living and patrolling the roads of Connecticut quickly returned to this aging soul. What was that old movie, “Somewhere in Time.”

Unlike the science fiction movie, this was the real thing and we were feeling romantic and nostalgic. Since this was the Honeymoon we never had 51 years ago, romance was in the air. On our first date, coffee and a donut in a diner in Pennshauken, NJ with another couple, we had our first kiss behind a tomb stone in a cemetery. It was a beautiful venue, small ponds with ducks swimming about,  grassy meadows and those around us remaining ever so quiet, go figure.

Thanks Google for giving us  a visual  back to the place of that first kiss.No cell phones or IT back in those days. I’d line up quarters, dimes and nickles at the pay phone to call her from Camp Lejeune, NC. Those were the days

Just moments prior to the recreation of that first kiss, only this time in Mystic, CT. Nope, no pictures, it was a private moment in the Elm Grove Cemetery.

The drawbridge.

We would have lunch up in the trees at the Oyster, Club.

Foxwood’s Casino and Resort loomed large in the distance as we ventured back to Tolland.

As the sun set on this grand re-creation of a first kiss and a trip to Mystic, , thank you Lord for 51 years with a grand lady, three children, nine grandchildren and 3 1/2 great-grandchildren. It doesn’t get any better than this.