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!