Rhode Island

First Cracker Barrel of the trip was not until Rhode Island. Long dry spell!

Well, let me see if I can get caught up. We had two reasons to stop in Rhode Island; first, Bruce's g-grandparents, Daniel and Margaret Baird, arrived from Scotland and got married in Rhode Island in 1886 and subsequently their two daughters, Jeanette and Margaret were born there. Second, my good friend Martha McAdam, whom I met in 1989 in Virginia and worked with for over 4 years, moved back to Rhode Island and lives in Exeter, south of Providence.  I hadn't seen her since we moved to CA in 2001.

So, first we got settled in our campground, Oak Embers Campground, after taking a wrong turn (not again!) and driving a few extra miles out into the countryside. The roads here are quite narrow and the campground was so far west it was almost to the Connecticut border. When we got there, the host was not around and we didn't know which site we were supposed to have. A couple of local guys came out to talk and see if they could help and one had a key to the office, so he went in to see if there was any paperwork. There was, so he escorted us to our site which was close to the road, but it's just a country road. The park is older, but it has a pool, laundry, etc.

Martha came out to the campground and we had a nice time chatting. We usually call each other about every other month, but in the last few years we have let that slide and haven't kept up as well.  Her daughter, Courtney, and her family were coming up for the weekend too and were leaving their two boys with Grandma for the week. She has been looking forward to seeing them and has a great week planned . The boys are 7 and 11. We went over to Martha's on Sunday for a cookout and saw her son Sean and her brother Kevin, whom we had not met before. Sean and Courtney are the same ages as Phil and Ryan so when we were together in Virginia we had a lot in common with our kids school years etc. It was great to see them again.

Our first stop for research was in the Town Office in Lincoln which is north of Providence. Turns out their records don't start until 1895 so we had to go to Central Falls a few miles away. The gentleman who helped me showed me the room where all the books are kept and let me help myself.

What I was looking for was in the 'Intentions of Marriage' book. Applicants, according to RI laws, had to report their parents names and where the applicants were from and their ages etc. The one piece I was really searching for was the name of Daniel's parents. I've been searching Scottish records for years looking for him before he immigrated and have never been able to find him because I didn't know his parents names.

So there it was, all handwritten in black and white. Eureka! I already knew Margaret's information.  I'm hoping now to be able to find Daniel's family in the census in Scotland to see if he had any siblings and maybe names of grandparents etc.

Next I wanted to verify birth records for Jeanette, who is Bruce's grandmother on his father's side. There has been some dispute over the years about her birth year so I wanted to see what was recorded. It took me a couple of tries, but I found what I needed. Looking at the headstone pictures we took last Memorial Day, I would have to say that date on her headstone is incorrect and possibly on her death certificate also. But I'll have to verify that when I get home. I didn't bring that with me. I found her sisters birth record also and verified that I had the correct dates,

Some seagulls were brown and much larger than our CA gulls.

Being kayakers, we were really impressed with this guy!

Saturday evening we decided to go to Narragansett, which is on the coast and a favorite beach area for the McAdam family. Martha advised us to go after 5 pm when there wouldn't be any fees for parking or beach access. There is a wall that divides the town from the water and people park along it to fish or just look out at the ocean. It's very peaceful and beautiful. We could see sailboats and large freighters going by. After driving around and exploring the area we decided to try and find a restaurant for some dinner. Being Saturday night, the place was packed and the wait time at the Coast Guard House, which we chose, was an hour and a half.

Boy, do I need a haircut!

We found a small table outside near the water to wait and had a couple of drinks, some popcorn shrimp, calamari and a bowl of chowdah. Excellent! Martha told me later that calamari is the 'state appetizer'.  Once our table was ready we were not real hungry so just ordered light plates. Bruce had grilled salmon on a salad and I had lobster mac & cheese...also excellent. It was all worth the wait.

Rhode Island has a state drink also. Coffee milk. Do you know what that is? Neither did I. It's sweet coffee-flavored syrup in milk, like chocolate syrup. No, I haven't tried it. May save that for another visit. Now if Dunkin Donuts served it, I could have had it anytime. There's a DD on every corner just about!

After searching the records, Bruce thought we should take a drive over to Portland, Connecticut to see Wayne Carini's F40 Motorsports which is a showroom and garage featured on the TV program 'Chasing Classic Cars". Bruce had hoped Wayne would be there, but he wasn't. We took a few pictures of some of the cars and then headed back to Rhode Island.

We left Rhode Island on Monday about 10 getting a later start than we had hoped and drove towards our next stop in New Jersey. Heading down I-95 through CT, then into New York we were directed towards the George Washington Bridge (the other bridges are 'passenger car only').

Willis can't believe how many trucks there are!

Note the 'no trucks' sign...

Trucks are directed to the two left lanes. Go figure!

I guess every truck has to go this way and it took us about 2 hours just to get through to NJ. Of course, going as slowly as we were, there was ample time to take pictures of the Bronx, apartment bldgs, and bridges.

28 minutes projected to go 3.87 miles...that was less than actual time.

Apartments in the Bronx

You can kinda of get a feeling for what it would be like to live in that big metropolis. It was interesting but unappealing. We did get a glimpse of the city when we crossed the bridge into NJ.

We told the GPS to avoid toll roads and it took us on all kinds of back roads into small towns etc. It's interesting what you see when you're off the main freeways.

We passed Rutgers University, Princeton University, Colgate Palmolive Technology Division. and the Robert M Woods Foundation, which you hear about all the time on PBS. Because of the long session getting through New York, we didn't get to our RV park until about 7 pm. Long day!

On to Virginia, kids and grandkids! With the holiday coming up, we will be in VA for more than a week. We struggled just to find an RV park with vacancy so we have to take what we can get. More to come!

Massachusetts

Did not expect lobster at McDonalds! Must be the most expensive thing on the menu. (That should be $8.99 but even at that, at McDonalds???)

We saw these signs in Maine at most McDonalds.

There must be something special about liquor and lottery tickets in NH.

I think we were only in NH for about 10 miles before we got to MA. It was a toll road but was so short it was only $5 for the coach and jeep. But now we can count NH in the states we've been in.

We left Portland area for Boston area on Sunday and decided to try to get a spot at Hanscom AFB Fam-camp. Being as close as it is to Boston, we thought it might fill up this time of year and they don't take reservations.

Our spot is in the trees.

We also figured that weekend visitors would be leaving on Sunday and it would be our best chance to find an empty site. We were right...the rv park was almost full but we found a site that someone had just vacated on Sunday in the trees with full hookups. A lot of the sites are out in the sun with no trees or shade of any kind so we felt pretty fortunate.

Hanscom is a very small base and no flying mission. There is a runway nearby but it is used mostly by small executive jets and small private planes. Once in a while a National Guard plane will come by but that's only on the weekends. The famcamp is tucked away through a neighborhood off the base but right next to the runway. For the most part it's pretty quiet. The couple who take care of the park live in an RV here until it closes in November then they head for Florida. They offered to walk our dogs while we took a trolley tour of Boston. Nice for the dogs, great for us.

Since the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is closed on Sunday and Monday we had a free day. We decided to find a dog park first.

Cat Rock Park is an off leash park of a different breed. I'm not sure it's fenced, but it is absolutely huge and dogs love it.

It's a forest with trails and a pond, and fields and the dogs who frequent it are so excited to get there it's crazy. Once they are off the leash they are gone. We didn't release our dogs right away but just followed the wide pathways into the woods to see what was there.  There were probably 50 dogs but we couldn't see them all. We could hear them barking, but not at each other, and as we walked they would run up to our dogs for a sniff and a wag and then be off again. Owners tried to keep up with the leashes and commands to wait up. It was crazy but we eventually let our dogs off the leash to see where they would go.

Altho they ran ahead they were good enough to stop and wait for us when we called them...thank God because if they ran into the woods we'd never find them! Fortunately for us, no squirrel or bird enticed Freddie away from the paths! There were lots of dogs swimming after sticks and balls in the pond but ours were just ready to be free. We let them lead, well Freddie was the leader this time. Roxie kind of hung back with us unsure of this new freedom. We thought we were lost for a while and just kept following pathways deeper into the woods and hoped we were turning back towards the parking lot. It took us a while, but we managed to find our way out. I think if we lived here, this would be our dogs' favorite place to go too. I worried about ticks while we were there...not for the dogs, they are protected, but for myself. I didn't use any bug spray as most parks are not forests. Ticks are a big problem , evidently, in this part of the country, and deer ticks especially. We stayed out of the high grasses and no one got any.

Once we got the dogs back into the car we headed for Plymouth Rock. Why not? The GPS said it was about an hour or so away. I have to say that I-95 looks the same here as in Maine and Virginia and North Carolina. You can't see a thing but trees lining the highway so you have no idea whether there is a town or gas station or anything coming up. If it weren't for the signage you'd have no idea how far you've come.

The Mayflower II

Mayflower Society House

Houses built in the 1600s

Oldest street in America

Looking down from the houses at the harbor. Plymouth Rock is under that portico.

Anyway, we wound our way around Boston to the south and got on Hwy 3 which runs all the way down to the end of Cape Cod. The weather was not too humid or hot and we enjoyed walking around and seeing the Mayflower II and the 'Rock'. We didn't spend any money going into any museums but I felt we saw what we wanted to. It's a pretty place but probably not too great in the winter.

Tuesday I had Bruce drive me to the New England Historic and Genealogical Society Library downtown. Again I found that most of what I wanted to find is available online, if you know where to look.

NEHGS bldg.

The person helping me told me that in Massachusetts you have to look at the city records as well as the state records when it comes to deaths. I had only seen state records for the death of John R. Heseltine so didn't realize that he was buried in Portland, which is what the city records revealed.  Wish I had known that before. But I was able to find his will online and it gave me some clues to his son's whereabouts during the years when he (the son) doesn't show up in census records. I'll keep that info for the family since it's not exactly great news and some would not like it to be made public.

I did a little more research online before deciding that I could do the same from home or the motor home so didn't need to stay any longer. I texted Bruce and we decided that I would get on the T and meet him at the last stop on the Red line and then we could drive back to the rv park. So I had to take the Green Line from where the library was into the central station and change trains to the Red Line. I figured it was going to be a piece of cake like in DC. They have something called a 'Charlie Ticket' which is an all day pass on any and all lines one way. Sounded good to me so I bought one ($2.25). The T must be ancient compared to DC metro or SF Bart. The squeal of wheels was incredible in the older cars that I was riding on to the Red Line. Once on the Red, the cars were more modern and quieter. Made the trip with no problem which prepared us for the next day's trolley tour.

Wednesday we did the tour. Incredible history lessons all along the way. We got the trolley tour as well as a harbor tour. We had the option to hop on and off the trolley anywhere they stopped so we could see whatever we wanted. The trolleys come by every 15 minutes so there's always one to hop back on. We started at the end of the route and took the harbor tour at stop #1 of the beginning. It worked out great.

Looking back at Boston.

Bunker Hill monument

These tour guides are so knowledgeable and made the trip so interesting. I know we learned a lot about the revolutionary war in school but these guys were a great refresher course! Even the trolley drivers had the spiel down to a T.

One stop was where the U.S.S. Constitution was in dry dock for repairs.

This is Samuel Adams grave in the Granary Burial Ground...one of Boston's oldest.

Of course, we had to go here! This is the original, not the one on TV.

Cheers!