Day 2, July 8th

I told you I'm horrible at this writing stuff. It takes me a while to get to the updating and writing of our adventures.

Welcome to Gillette's Castle. It was a horribly hot and humid day with no ac in the van to take comfort in after a hike. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, I guess I was thinking of our goal and all of you out there looking for us. hahaha

Even the camera was revolting against the humidity!

We arrived about 11:30am and decided to tour the castle first. $6 per adult and $2 per child.

Cool! right?

So being the daughter of an architect and a sister of a photographer I take lots of pictures about architecture. Sorry. I will share a few but Gillette was very skilled in his design of his home and it's intriguing to discover all his crafty ways by paying a visit yourself.

To start Gillette built a railroad track on his property complete with Grand Central Station overlooking the CT River. The kids are contemplating life, haha just kidding. I'm not sure what they were thinking but the pictures are cute.

Orion in the entryway closet complete with stone hooks to hang coats.



Main staircase. It has a stone seat in the corner and a secret passageway to the living room
 so he could skip ahead of his guests and greet them as they enter the room.

Tiffany hanging lamp at the top of the stairs.

Electrical panel in main staircase. The secret passage door is just to the left up a few skinny stairs.

Secret passage door in the living room.
 





Orion peering out the window with it's unique locking system.



Merick was very intrigued by the running fountain in the greenhouse room off the living room.

 

This is the dinning room table. Gillette put metal rails on the floor under this table and his desk table
 and chair so that it wouldn't scratch the wood when it moved. Smart guy!







Each door and window in the house has it's own unique door lock.

Are you exhausted yet? That was only the first floor. Upstairs there are bedrooms and each room has it's own bathroom with running water. He even had his own fire house and water tank in his home in case of an event.

His room is the only room with hand painted decoration on the woven walls. This is his light switch
over his bed so he wouldn't have to get up to turn off the light when reading in bed.

We were back outside and ready for lunch. So we walked back to the van and up the hill to a small picnic grove. It was very peaceful and quiet if you don't have three kids with you. Just kidding I love the chatter.

HIKE TIME!!! Or at least we thought. We ventured into the building to grab a trail map. The maps was beautifully hard to decipher. So we threw caution and the map to the wind and set out. The trails are horrible and not marked. Trees are down all over the place and they just end with no warning leaving you to climb all the way back up to figure out another way around.

There were some cool things to see if you don't mind being lost in time for a bit. That was al we could handle on such a humid day so I'm glad it wasn't worse or a long hike. All in all we had fun because we were together!