Afternoon at the Cove

The Jones Beach Air Show has been a Memorial Day Weekend tradition for Richard and me the past few years. But not this year. Instead of performing in the USA, the Air Force's Thunderbirds are doing a show outside of the USA, in Turkey.

This year, Richard and I drove to Fall River, Massachusetts yesterday (Saturday 5/28/2011) and visited Battleship Cove, about a 2-hour drive from Hartford. This site has the WWII-era battleship, USS Massachusetts; a WWII-era submarine, USS Lionfish; a destroyer, USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.; two WWII PT boats; and, a Soviet-built missile corvette, Hiddensee.

We were there for about 4 hours. The weather was mixed. When we arrived, the temperature was cool and the sky was gray and dark; we thought we felt some small rain drops. But later, the sun started to peek through, and by the end of the day, the sky was totally blue and sunny (and hot).

At the start, we were startled by the PTs boats we came across unexpectedly inside two buildings; they loomed up over us out of the gray. Then we explored the battleship, climbing up and down, going from stern to bow and back. We had a little lunch in the battleship. Then we toured the missile corvette, submarine, and destroyer. In the forward torpedo room of the submarine we met a veteran who grew up in Clevo and graduated from Collinwood High School in 1957. The picture of us above was taken by a man from Germany.

We also have a tradition of getting those "special" pennies (see picture at left). Richard has a whole collection from different places we have visited. An angel assisted us for this one. I did not have a penny and neither did the snack bar but a gentleman generously gave me two!

We returned to West Hartford just in time for supper. So we stopped at one of our favorite local pizza places, Angelina's Pizzeria. We shared a salad and a "slice" of pepperoni pizza. The "slice" is actually two huge slices or about half a small pizza. We also got a slice of cheese and took home half (i.e., a regular size slice) for Lynn.