Wednesday morning,
01OCT, we made a short drive to our next RV park in Bellingham, MA. Why Bellingham? Because there are three states in the
continental USA that we have not visited since we started full time RV’ing, or
on our four month RV adventure back in 2004 – Rhode Island, New Jersey &
Delaware. So we decided to use the next
week to explore Rhode Island but could not find a “suitable” RV park in the
state. So we picked a RV park in
Massachusetts just north of Providence, RI.
Late Thursday
morning we headed into Providence, RI, to gather sightseeing information. First stop was the Roger Williams National
Memorial. This is a small National Park
Service facility devoted Roger Williams who was driven out of Massachusetts by
the Puritans due to his radical ideas about freedom of religion. While many of the original colonist left
England to escape religious persecution, this did not mean they would tolerate other
faiths in their colonies!
Williams argued the
radical idea that the practice of religion should be a matter of conscience for
all men including papists, protestants, jews, turks, quakers, baptists, &
even non-believers. He also argued that
Native Americans should not be converted to Christianity. These ideas were viewed as heretical &
forced Roger Williams to flee Massachusetts (where Quakers were sometimes hanged
by Puritans) to what would become Rhode Island, a colony based on religious
freedom. As well as viewing the exhibits
about Williams’ life, we also watched a short video about Williams & the founding of Rhode Island.
Trivia – whose
statue is on top of RI’s state house?
Note – Williams never sat for an “official” portrait, painting or
sketch, so there are varying images of him used for paintings & sculptures
after his passing. In fact, supposedly
one RI college has his statue with the face of baseball great Ted Williams?
The Memorial is also
part of the National Park Service’s John H Chafee Blackstone River Valley
National Heritage Corridor, more on this later.
Next stop was the Providence
Tourist Center located in the Convention Center (hard to find & parking is difficult). Followed by a late lunch at
the Original New York System for hotdogs.
Dan went with three dogs, fries & coffee milk (think chocolate milk
with a coffee flavor). Corrie went with the
excellent chicken soup. “New York
System” hotdogs have nothing to do with New York & are unique to Rhode
Island & consist of a little grilled tube steak with
squared-off ends, meat sauce (looks like chili but much different taste),
mustard, chopped raw onions, and celery salt. Locals known them as gaggers, or as it is
properly pronounced, gaggahs. This
establishment is credited with bringing the New York System to Rhode Island;
but was actually a copy of the Coney Island Hotdog from Nick’s Original Coney
Island Hotdogs in Fall River, MA; which apparently was based on something from
Philadelphia?
Friday morning it
was off to New Bedford, MA, for a walkabout.
First stop was the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (note -
the Historical Park is partners with the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, AK,
to help recognize the contributions of Alaskan Natives to the history of whaling). We arrived just in time to see the National
Park Service film “The City That Lit the World”, the title reflects the fact
that whale oil lamps supplanted candles as the primary source of interior
illumination before being displaced by kerosene. After viewing the exhibits we then commenced
walking about on the cobblestone streets before a very late lunch &
returning to the RV.
American whaling
started in Nantucket (hence the term “Nantucket sleigh ride”) but New Bedford
became the world’s largest center of whaling vessels & businesses, because
the whaling ship’s became too large for the Nantucket harbor & New
Bedford’s rail connections to the rest of the USA. During the height of whaling New Bedford was
the richest city in the USA & most diverse.
New Bedford’s diversity included Europeans, Azoreans, Cape Verdeans, Africans,
runaway slaves, etc; all were treated equally & received equal pay. Hard to believe but these men signed-on for
voyages that lasted up to five years!
Part of New
Bedford’s history is that Herman Melville lived here, shipped out on a whaling
vessel, & wrote the classic “Moby-Dick (or The Whale)” based on his New
Bedford experiences. As you may remember
the novel was made into a classic movie starring Gregory Peck way back in 1956.
One of the scenes is a fiery sermon from
a pulpit shaped like a ship’s bow before the PEQUOD sets sail. Seamen’s Bethel is where Melville says the
sermon took place, but the Church never had a pulpit as described in the
movie. To satisfy the tourists a pulpit
based on the 1956 movie was installed in 1959.
Note – until recently the next door Mariners’ Home offered
“Accommodations for merchant seaman or fishermen, including breadfast, TV, ping
pong, game room, ...., including Coast Guard. Open 24 hours.”
We also learned that
New Bedford was a primary destination of runaway slaves on the Underground
Railroad. This was for four reasons – 1)
whaling vessels offered equal pay, & safety from bounty hunters when
underway 2) the coastal trading system of New Bedford allowed easy movement of
runaways to other USA ports, Europe & Africa 3) the city was controlled by
Quakers, staunch abolitionists 4) the city already had more people of color by
percentage than any other city outside the south.
Late Saturday
morning, 04OCT, it was off to Providence, RI, for some exploring. First stop was Hasbro world headquarters in
Pawtucket; there Mr Potato Head whispered in our ear – "eat mor onin rings"! Sadly no tours are given. Further down the road we discovered a large,
old, industrial building with large signs announcing Vineyard Vines Whalehouse
Sale. Turns out Vineyard Vines is a high
end clothing line from Martha Vineyard & they were having a closeout sale
for the next ten days. For some reason
Dan noted we were the only truck in the parking lot full of mercedes, beemers,
volvos, lexus, & high end buicks, toyotas, etc. We did a little driving in downtown Pawtucket
but didn’t see anything of interest.
From there we headed
to the Federal Hill area of Providence (aka Little Italia). This was a very scenic area for a walkabout
w/numerous restaurants & cafes; in fact many of the older generation (hey
that’s us!) were speaking in Italian. On
one street corner we saw several men discussing world politics(?) in Italian. Our late lunch & cannoli’s were at Via
Roma, excellent! Providence’s Little
Italy is highly recommended!
Sunday we got our
annual flu shots, before heading to the Big Top Flea Market in Providence – a
disappointment. From there it was back
to Little Italy for coffee, lunch, & more cannoli’s.
Last stop of the day
was at the John H. Chaffe Blackstone River Valley National Historic Corridor
visitor center back in Pawtucket. As the
National Park Service brochure says the “...Corridor encompasses some 450,000
acres between Worcester, Mass., and Providence, R.I. The federal government does not own or manage
land as it does in most national parks.
Instead, people, businesses, non-profit historic and environmental
organizations, 24 local and two state governments, the National Park Service,
and a unifying commission work together to protect the corridor’s identity and
prepare for its future.” If you read our
Lake Placid, NY, BLOG about the National Park Service Erie Canalway National
Heritage Corridor, this is the same concept.
At the visitor
center we saw a very good film explaining the birth of America’s Industrial
Revolution in the Blackstone River Valley along the 46 miles of the Blackstone
River. Right across the street from the
visitor center is what is considered the first American factory, Slater
Mill. Then it was back to the RV to
enjoy the good weather after two days of rain showers.
One interesting fact
we learned was that before canals & eventually railroads, it cost as much
to ship a ton of goods 30 miles as it would to ship the same ton to Europe!
Monday, 06SEP, we
decided to drive to Newport, RI. First
stop was the city’s excellent visitor center.
There we picked up tickets for one of the many “trolley” tours of the
city & “summer cottages” of America’s first billionaires (can you say
Vanderbilts or Astors?) built during the Gilded Age. There are at least three companies offering
tours & their prices are very close to each other. We picked the one that was offering a 25% discount
to seniors on Mondays for all of 2014.
Not sure why the other companies don’t have similar discounts? The trolley tours can also be combined with
tours of some of the summer cottages that have been restored. By combining the tickets you save money over
driving to the cottage & purchasing separately. Since we were running late, we did not tour
any of the cottages. One thing different
about the trolley tour vs others we have taken, was you could not get on &
off the trolleyL
On the tour we learned:
---many people that
have livestock now have llamas – why?
Because coyotes are now a problem in Newport & apparently fear
llamas?
---“the Mrs Astor”
established two rules for the 400 Club (ie the 400 socially elite of the
time). Rule 1 – you must be a
multi-millionaire & have sufficient funds that your offspring would be
multi-millionaires. Rule 2 – your family
must not have had to work for three generations. Apparently Rule 2 has kept Donald Trump out
of the few remaining exclusive clubs in Newport?
---while vacationing
at his summer cottage in Newport, Howard Sterling Vanderbilt changed the
scoring of auction bridge & is credited with the modern game of contract
bridge.
---one of the 400
married a wife from Switzerland. Apparently after some time she wanted to go
back to Switzerland. So he recreated her
own Swiss village including farm animals in Newport. Now decades later it turns out these farm animals
are now endangered in Europe (ie belted galloway cows & fainting sheep)
& the Newport ones are needed for gene diversity.
---the Newport
Summer League baseball park was built next to the Mudville Pub by the WPA in
1937. Since the pub predates the
ballpark, you can watch the games for free from their outfield dugout.
Tuesday we decided
to take a break from sightseeing. Corrie
headed out shopping, while Dan started to get RV ready for tomorrow’s
departure. Somewhere in the last couple
of weeks our air horns died? Dan checked
the fuses & steering wheel switch with no joy. After two calls to Tiffin in Red Bay, AL, to
find out where the electric to air “interface” was; a technician finally called
back. When Dan opened the cargo hold
where the interface was located, it was obvious that the 12volt wires had
shorted out causing a small fire & causing the air diaphragm & air
hoses to melt!!! Luckily none of the
chemicals in the hold caught fire, or pressurized air was realized. Definitely dodged a bullet on that one!!!
That evening we headed
out for Portuguese food in East Providence.
The restaurant Dan picked was closed on Tuesday nights, even though the
website said it was open. For the first
time Dan used his smart phone to connect to the internet, & searched out
the nearest Portuguese restaurant (Madeira within one mile). Very good food & the evening saved!
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