American Thumb - Day 3 - Old Saybrook, Connecticut to Yarmouth, Massachusetts

Jet lag is doing strange things to my daughter.  She woke at 4.30 in the morning singing a fractured version Bobbity-Bobbity-Boo from Cinderella, sounding not so much like a Disney singalong and more like some voodoo incantation.  She demanded a story and couldn't get to sleep again until I joined her in bed and hugged her.  She fell asleep for the next few hours, my arms trapped under her.  

She's said some weird stuff today.

'Rhinoceros!  And sweetcorn.  It's a meal,' she said at one point.

'Daddy, I like bums,' she said at another.

Both might be fair points.

She fell asleep in the restaurant tonight, stretched out on the seat of our booth.  I'm hoping she'll adjust to the time zone soon.

It was a cold morning and we hit the road early, heading through Connecticut far too quickly.  We were approaching the state border with Rhode Island I realised just how much I liked the place and how desperate I was to acquire a souvenir, no matter how tacky or useless.  So I took the last Connecticut exit off the freeway and stopped at a petrol station, just hoping for...something.  I found a petrol station.  And came away with petrol.  Good old Connecticut petrol.  The place sold very little else.  It was kind of a shame.  I realised how much the previous couple of days' journeys had enamoured the place to me and that I wouldn't be getting back there any time soon.

Rhode Island is a state about as big as a double bed and as we drove (still veering to the right but seriously, getting the hang of it), I realised we were getting close to the edge of that too.  I couldn't have it that we'd get through it without setting foot in it so we went rogue, ignored the satnav and pulled into a town called Cranston, a choice informed and inspired by Brian Cranston of Breaking Bad fame.  There, we toured the suburbs, again the clapboard housing, blossom trees, tidy streets and palpable sense of civic pride.  We found a Dunkin' Donuts which are as common here as bus stops are in England.  I'm sure Rhode Island has a lot more to offer but we ploughed on.  I'm just glad we got to see something of it.

When I was a kid, I remember watching a film where someone said they were going to Cape Cod.  I thought cape was a verb, possibly a method of catching or cooking cod.  It was years later I learned it was a place.  On a map it's a weird hook that curves out into the Atlantic underneath Boston.  The end of it looks almost precarious, like it could break off and float away, or be overwhelmed by a freak wave.  It was with that kind of optimism that we booked accommodation in an altogether more sturdy looking part of the Cape called Yarmouth.

Even so, the Atlantic is purring right outside our window.  We took a walk along the white sand beach collecting shells, but it was cold.  It must be unbelievably beautiful when it's sunny.  Fingers crossed for better weather tomorrow.  In thumb news, we took a dip in the hotel pool, E and S splashing around and laughing, me almost sidelined, standing there like I'm hailing a taxi.  Post swim, my wife had to shampoo my hair for me.  Curse the indignity of my failed digit.

We had dinner at a seafood place called Skippers.  It was amazing food, but seafood has always frightened me.  It's partly because things have faces and get eaten whole.  Take the shrimp I ordered for example.  There were five giant shrimp on my plate.  It could have been a family.  Their deaths could have been a massive disaster in the shrimp world.  At least when you order a steak you can imagine them strapping the cow back up and sending it back out into the field to recover.  Pudding was Reece's Cups and a Baby Ruth bar, morally a lot more palatable.