3 hours in CT

This past weekend we headed up to Worchester, Massachusetts for the GK Chesterton conference. Not wanting the bother of airports we decided to drive. According to Google Maps it was a 621 mile, nine and a half hour trip. So, we figured, with food and rest breaks, we should make it in about ten hours. Not exactly my favorite thing to do, being in a car for that long, but the destination made it worthwhile.

I am always amazed when I travel to see just how vast our country is. There is so much beautiful, undeveloped land. Driving through Pennsylvania was spectacular. Rolling hills, lush forests and steep stone mountainsides surrounded the highways. Himself was probably getting tired of me pointing out one gorgeous vista after another, but he humored me anyways.  

The small bit of New York state that we drove through provided us with more beautiful sights. The most breathtaking was the Hudson River valley.  
 
And then we hit Connecticut. At rush hour. What should have been a ninety minute leg of the trip turned into a three hour one! But, driving slowly through Hartford gave us great views of beautiful gold-domed buildings we would have barely been able to glimpse had we been going at full speed. Is Harford the insurance capital of the world? Every direction we looked was another, very large building with some corporate designation as a seller of insurance.

What was funny, at least to me, was once we got out of the 5-mile-per-hour-traffic-jam and onto open roads the traffic moved at a dizzying pace. I was going 70 in a 65 zone and looked like I was standing still! It was like each of the drivers was going “Weeeee…. I’m making up for lost time!!!!”

We breathed a sigh of relief when we crossed over into Massachusetts. We were almost there. But, no, not really. Unfortunately, I programed the wrong address into the GPS. Yep, that's right. Instead of arriving at Assumption College we were at the now closed Worcester Insane Asylum.  

When we finally did arrive at the conference, tired, hungry, and more than a little agitated, we ran into Dale Ahlquist. He asked how our trip was. Himself replied “Well, we spent a day in Connecticut this afternoon!”

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered;
an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”
– GKC, All Things Considered, 1908

AMDG