One last vacation post

So this will be the final vacation post, as the title indicates, and it's likely to be a long one. This is all the miscellany of activities and sites that didn't get into the other posts. So prepare yourself for some jumps through time and between topics.

First off, we have ostentatious displays of wealth.  The harbor was crammed full of incredible yachts and schooners and whatever else rich people call their boats.  This one had some incredible lines and woodwork.  Next, we have ostentatious terrestrial displays of wealth.  Again, what can I say... the houses were beautiful.  It's pretty cool what a few million bucks can buy.

At the end of Watch Hill, there is an operational lighthouse.  Both the point and the structure itself are amazing.  Very picturesque.  Although I would be willing to keep this house if it was the only one available, I would prefer something much more remote.  Still, it was a neat feeling to watch the light blink and to hear the horn blow at night.

These wild roses were everywhere.  I suspect that they are deliberately planted and pruned by a legion of underpaid migrant workers just to perfume the atmosphere of Watch Hill.

On Monday Sarah, Veneta, Zhora, Jenn, and I went to a restaurant called Mews Tavern in Wakefield, Rhode Island.  They had a nice offering of various seafoods and pizzas and burgers; better than average pub fair, but we were especially excited that they had 70 beers on tap.  Now, be assured that I am bragging when I say that I had tasted all of the beers on the menu except a handful of local brews.  It's pretty cool to have all those flavors in my taste memory.  For better or worse, "Tasting" is not a learning style.  Neither is drinking beer, for that matter.  I may have missed my calling.

Zhora was a great part of the crew.  She was well behaved, enthusiastic, and curious pretty much simultaneously, pretty much all the time.  We played a lot of games, made a lot of believe, read some books, solved some puzzles, and ran around an awful lot.

I don't remember exactly what the deal was with this carousel, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I do remember that the hair is from real manes and tails and that it's one of the few remaining carousels where the horses hang from chains.  The horses themselves struck me as rather grotesque, and the eyes in particular gave them the appearance that they might turn on the young riders or the surrounding crowd if given half the chance.  Still, the kids seemed to enjoy it, especially the end when they got to try to grab the rings on their way past.

Zhora won a ribbon and a ring one afternoon, ostensibly for grabbing a bunch of rings on her way by, but I suspect all the kids get rings after their parents dump the equivalent of $20 in change on the ride.  Still, I was happy for her, and it was nice for Bob to see some tangible results from buying so many tickets and standing by and watching his kid go round and round.

I think this one might not need a caption...

It was very nice that the house had a fire pit.  This crew HAD to take advantage.

It was the 195th anniversary of the birth of Herman Melville, and since we didn't go to Mystic to hear the marathon reading of Moby Dick, we read the first few chapters around the campfire.  It was pretty awesome.  I realized how rarely we, as adults, read aloud or to each other.  I really enjoyed hearing everyone's voices.

Veneta was really excited about going on a train ride and purchased tickets for us all to get on-board a Pullman car for a little scenic tour.  Though short, the ride was very enjoyable.

We enjoyed watching the scenery go by and looked for egrets, osprey, and other birds as we rode past rivers and marshes and inlets.  It was quite relaxing.  At the far end of the line we disembarked to get on a river boat and ambled up the river a ways before returning to the train and, ultimately, back to the rail yard.

Engine 3025

One of the big events of the trip was Sarah's quest for her first lobster.  We had tried and failed to accomplish this task on our trip to Maine last year.  We were too far out of tourist season, apparently.  But this summer; success!  We ate at a restaurant in the old coastguard barracks.  There was a SUPER swanky part inside, downstairs, so we proceeded upstairs.  As an aside, while waiting for a seat, I had the best local beer of the trip.  A really well balanced, flavour packed Belgian.

A little help from Mom!

This is the two headed monster!  Scary.

This is my dream boat.  Seriously.  If I had to have something bigger than a canoe, this is what it would be.  Note the Coors Light tap handle attached to the throttle lever.

This is from one of the final days where it rained and we walked around Stonington, went to the "fair", visited the farmers market and the wharf, and did a little shopping.  I wish this was more in focus, but it was a moment and a vision and I snapped it on the fly. 

Thanks for this picture, Zhora!

Beach Girls

A little bit of Mystic

I thought I had more photos of Mystic, but apparently I was having too much fun to even take the camera out.  Anyway, it was an incredible historical day full of masted ships, sea shanties, huge anchors, and very old houses and schools.

I snapped this shot of Sarah and Jenn walking and chatting from the second story of an olde homestead.  The lady of the house was in the kitchen cooking a berry pie in a dutch oven in a very large fire place and explaining the process patiently to a pair of Canadians.

There were many figureheads in the Mallory Exhibit Hall, but this one was my favorite.  Unlike many of the others, "The Woman of the Roses" is believed to be a carving of a real person.  It is believed that she is most likely a woman named Belva Lockwood, a suffragist, lawyer, and presidential nominee in 1884 and 1888!  Seems like a cool person to learn more about.

This was a picket fence that I found pretty impressive.  Dad pointed out what a pain it would be to repaint it!

Although there were huge masted ships of various sorts all over the place, and Sarah and I went on several, the only pictures I thought to take were in the small boats building.  I liked the lines of this one and could almost imagine sailing it around on a lake.

This is more my speed though.  Give me a paddle over a sail or a motor any day.  I'd rather be fully aware of exactly what I'm getting myself into.  Leave the gasoline and various pressure systems to the more adventurous and daring.

I believe there was a boat in this building as well.  

There are two moments from this day that compete for first prize.  One was the awesome chanteyman who we were lucky enough to hear sing twice.  Around noon we went to the "village green" where he held court at a gazebo and explained many different shanties, their histories, and various functions.  Of course, being a troubadour he had a great stage presence and a wicked sense of humour.  He ended his lesson with a jig doll he called Dancing Jack and a rollicking song to go with it.  Sarah and I were so enthralled we followed the chanteyman from the gazebo to the L.A. Dunton to watch and listen to the raising of the anchor, for which, of course, there was a sea shanty to get the work done.  Very cool.  The other prize encounter was in the printing shop where we met a man who was setting the type for the flyer for the Moby Dick reading later in the week.  There we got to see type set, pamphlets pressed, and amazing old machines in action.  We also learned about the origins of many common terms like "coining a phrase", uppercase, lowercase, "mind your Ps and Qs", and "out of sorts".  The last was the most surprising to me, and comes from the fact that a single piece of type was called a sort.  Thus, if you ran out of a certain letter or symbol, you were "out of sorts", and likely to be frustrated and desperately searching for a solution to your situation!

For a little bit of the mood, I submit the following!

A little beach teaser.

There will be more to come throughout the week, so stay posted.  I want to put out a few pics at a time since it's easier to tell a story that way and stay with it.  What follows is an account of our beach vacation in Westerly RI and surrounding burgs.

This first batch will just be beach pictures.  This first is from a beach I only went to once on the very first morning after we arrived.  We stayed in a little house, which you will see in future posts, in Westerly, about ten minutes drive from the beach we went to most often.  The picture above is from Misquamicut Beach.  It is a public beach about 3.5 miles from the house.  Obviously, Harrington's do not frequent lifeguarded beaches, but it was very picturesque after the first half of my run.  The second half of my run was done barefoot after I got a blister.  So, for those of you playing at home, that's a 7 mile run after several weeks of sitting on my tuckus in grad school, half of which was done barefoot.  Needless to say, I hobbled around like an old man for a few days after this adventure.  Still, the beach was beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, here is a picture from later in the day when we all went down to Napatree Beach in Watch Hill, RI.  Look at those lovely ladies playing in the surf!  Bob came out on Tuesday because he had some obligations for work that needed priority, so Jenn and Zhora travelled with Sarah and I, and Veneta met us at the house Sunday night.  I believe I had already gone to bed when Veneta rolled in, but she was ready for some awesome beach action on Monday.  The water was a little chilly at first, but not bad at all and we quickly adapted to it.  We all agreed that the waves were just incredible.  Look for their characteristic perfect curl in the backgrounds of these shots.

Napatree has a long history, which you can read about on wikipedia like I did, if you're interested.  Pertinent information includes that it is essentially an exposed sandbar, very narrow, only about 1.5 miles long and devoid of trees and most vegetation.  There are some beautiful wild roses that grow on it, and many sea birds hunt the water's edge.  This is the only beach we swam at because of its proximity, beauty; and did I mention the perfect waves?

Wednesday night Sarah and I went on a date for dinner and a sit in Stonington, CT a few miles away.  Remind me to tell you about dinner later.  This is a beach blog, so I'm really trying to stay focused.  We sat together holding hands in our beach chairs and watched the sail boats, schooners, and yachts move in and out of the harbor past the setting sun.  If that seems too much to handle, let me add some comic relief in the way of a gaggle of scuba divers.  When we arrived at the beach, it was already what could respectably be called evening, and yet, there were about four or five men doing battle with their scuba gear on the beach and seeming to be winning.  Sure enough, within a few minutes after we got comfortable, they had managed to subdue most of their gear and get out into the water relatively further than the children were splashing.  Although we felt a legitimate concern that this ragtag crew would somehow precipitate a rescue mission, our more immediate concern became the one "diver" (really just an overly dressed wader still at this point) who continued to fiddle with his equipment.  If it had been anything else, bemusement would have been our only feeling, but as the item in question was a harpoon gun, our interest in self preservation was complicating our emotional responses.  I have never in my life seen such a horrifying ambivalence toward muzzle control. And I hope to live a long and healthy life without a repeat.  As he waved the harpoon gun carelessly back and forth, I felt mixtures of personal dread, fear for my beloved, and concern about the inadequacies of my most recent CPR/first-aid training depending on whether it was my chest, Sarah's limbs, or the playfully naive children's heads that were down range, respectively.  Finally, he managed to do something that made him give up his folly and submerge.  We did not stay long enough to see whether all in his party returned unperforated.

I did quite a bit of pleasure reading this week.  After months of forced reading on subjects as interesting as school finance, management theory, and comparisons of various teacher evaluation rubrics, I let loose with an indiscriminate carnival of subject matter.  Primarily, I was reading Chuck D's journal from his days on the HMS Beagle, as seen here.  He was a great human being whose character continues to grow in my mind.   On this page he is chastising the senseless and indiscriminate slaughter of the "savages of South America" by the "Christian armies of Europe".  That was in 1831!  AND it was in between identifying new species of rhea, comparing various adaptations of finches on islands, fossil hunting, considering maritime habits and conditions, and both supporting Lyell's new theories about the ages of the earth with his findings and using that theory to build what would be one of the greatest scientific revelations in history!  He also thought slavery was barbarous.  Darwin was one bad brother.  Anyway, besides that, we did some collective Melville reading; he turned 195 this year... or at least his bones did.  And, I finally looked into the free kindle editions that Dad has been telling me about, so as anyone who knows me can probably guess, that was exciting.  Coincidentally, this is the first month that I've gotten a warning that I've used 75% of my data plan... I'm sure they're unrelated.  I downloaded a collection of pirate journals printed in the early 1900s, a couple John Muir books, some essays by Bertrand Russell I haven't read yet, a journal of a whaler, a wildreness survival book published in the late 1800s, and a book titled, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913.  I read bits and pieces of all of these.  They are all getting enjoyably confused in my head along with the audible edition of MASH that we downloaded for the car ride.

Oh.  I also looked at the Sibley's Guide to Birds of North America a lot and tried desperately to see the differences between the sea gulls that all these birders claim to see.  So far, with Sarah's help, we have identified grey gulls, brown gulls, gulls that are a little bit grey, a tiny bit black, and mostly white (see image above), and gulls that raid beach bags.  Sibley, incidentally does not recognize any of these species.

This is a picture of Bob foolishly trying to feed the gulls from his hand.  He was carried away right after this picture was taken.  Fortunately he sailed safely back to earth, using his hat as a sail, after being dropped by the flock.

Back just in time for some surfing lessons!  Zhora talked about surfing for at least the week leading up to our trip, so it was really cool to see her get to ride around on the boogie board a little bit.  Sarah and Bob both took turns too, though they both chose to go a little deeper and lay on the board.

On our last full day in Rhode Island I ran (haltingly) down the bay side of Napatree Point and back up the ocean side.  I stopped many times to study the birds, flip over shells, and look at the slaughter of crustaceans and fish that the oystercatchers, gulls, terns, plovers, pipers, eiders, and ospreys had wrought.  Above is a shot through my binoculars of a pair of ruddy turnstones!  They are beautiful and remind me of quail in a way.  This was a first sighting for me.

Here are many American oystercatchers earning their name.

This guy (deceased) is just a little larger than my thumb!

I made this one extra large, but you may need to click on it and blow it up even more to see the shell that the gull is carrying here.  I am super excited that I got to see this guy pry a shelled animal out of the surf, carry it high into the air and expertly drop it on some rocks to break it open!  I did a quick look around to see if David Attenborough would be there to tell me about this amazing behavior.  What was really cool was that he had to really think about what he was doing.  He had to get high enough to break the shell, but stay low enough that he could get to his dinner before it got snatched out from under him!

This is the beach at the end of the point.  The roses smelled lovely and were absolutely gorgeous when taken in from a distance.  Unfortunately, I missed an opportunity to snap a picture of their greatest mass blooming... we spent that day in the water... oh well, such are the sacrifices of beach vacations.

Wish I could have gotten a glimpse of this deer.  Might be the smartest or luckiest of its species!

I've posted it before on this site, but it bears repeating when looking at all these forms:

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us."  This, from Darwin's later and better known work. 

So, that's the end of the first vacation blog post.  The beach was fantastic and, in light of all the privately held lands, private club beaches, and the like, we felt very fortunate to find such a lovely and unspoiled spit of land.  As usual, we wished for more time at the beach and enjoyed every minute we got, unapologetically.  Through the coming week I'll post a few short videos we shot, do a Mystic Seaport blog, and put up a post about some of the other activities we got into.  You won't want to miss the pictures of Sarah with her first lobster dinner!  Already dreaming about Ocracoke Coffee Company and mile marker 59 on 12 South!