On the Backyard Road Trips food tour of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Eastern Connecticut we are continuing on with an old favorite, Joy’s Family Restaurant. Joy’s is located in Norwich, CT, my hometown. It is a greasy spoon with breakfast, lunch, and dinner options and also Mexican favorites. Joy’s is located on Route 32 at 671 […]
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For the inaugural post in the “Garden Series” at Backyard Road Trips, we are heading to the coast of Connecticut. First, we will visit an old faithful, Harkness Memorial State Park in Waterford, and then swing back through New London, located right next door, to go to the Connecticut College Arboretum. These Connecticut gardens will not
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The Vanilla Bean Cafe, located in the center of Pomfret, CT, is a bit of an anomaly. Although out-of-staters may have never heard of most towns in Northeastern Connecticut, also known as the “Quiet Corner,” somehow they know of the Vanilla Bean Cafe. Another set of opposites regards the clientele. A folk music club at
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The other day I was craving crepes. Living in New England, it’s not like there is a creperie on every corner. Outside of Boston, I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever seen one. Being in Norwich, Connecticut, at the time, I simply typed in “crepes near me.” The closest was at a restaurant called Smakosh in
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My wife Katie and I (Jim, not Zack) started a new tradition of participating in the “First Day Hikes”, a program hosted by the CT state park system. It’s exactly what it sounds like. CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection organizes several hikes on the first day of the year at state parks throughout
First Day Hike- Mansfield Hollow Dam Read More »
As a nonfiction writer, I honed my chops writing about the weird, the paranormal, and the odd. This came full circle when a post from two years ago about Primitive Crow, an antiques and primitives store in Bozrah, Connecticut, recently saw an upsurge in website traffic. This is because the Primitive Crow was featured on
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As the care for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled has progressed from state institutions to group homes and day programs, the buildings that once housed the state hospitals are left vacant. The process of deinstitutionalization has left impressive buildings to a variety of fates. Some, like Foxboro State and Taunton State Hospitals, have been
Seaside State Park Read More »
At Backyard Road Trips, we can’t get enough of the line of lip and body balms from Drew’s Honeybees. We’ve written about the company and even had Drew Burnett, founder of the company, on our podcast! What I love about Drew’s Honeybees is that not only are ingredients of the finest quality, organic, and environmentally
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As one of her pandemic projects, my mom has been slowly tackling the boxes of stuff to go through in the attic. (Similar to what I did with the basement.) Among the gems she found was a story I wrote at age eleven. It began with me eating chocolate chip cookies and cheez balls for
Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center and Illiano’s Grill Read More »
Route 32 travels from Keene, New Hampshire to New London, Connecticut. Recently, after exploring towns in western and central Massachusetts, I decided to take Route 32 home to Norwich, Connecticut from Royalston, Massachusetts at its border with New Hampshire. Not particularly thinking about writing about my journey, the photos I took were minimal. The journey is
Classic New England Back Roads: Route 32 Read More »
