On a drizzly October morning, I drove back to the Connecticut coast and boarded the ferry from New London to Orient Point on Long Island.  Nice views of the city and the bay and some of the many lights and lighthouses in the area as we pulled out of the harbor on grey seas under a grey sky for the hour and a half sail across the top of Long Island Sound.

Drove through surprisingly busy Greenport then through farmland,

giving way to grapes and many wineries

then roads crowded with people coming and going from the farmstands loaded with pumpkins and all the fall products, pony rides, carnivals, and more, and then miles and miles of suburban shopping centers and strip malls.  I finally arrived at Walt Whitman's birthplace near Huntington Station.  The site includes a small newer visitor center where there is a one of the few first editions of Leaves of Grass but features the house, built by his father, where Walt was born.

Back on the road, driving through the endless crowded suburbs, the older ones like Rockville more pleasing than the newer ones.  I skirted the bottom of New York City on the Belt Parkway, crossed to Staten Island on the Verrazano Bridge,

 then over into New Jersey.  After some wandering around, I finally found Cheesequake State Park and a refuge from the traffic.  (I was hoping for something more exotic, but cheesequake is derived from a native american word meaning “upland.”)