The Last Days

Thursday we drove to north to Providence for a tour of Brown University.  Jane, Rose and I took the tour while Mark and the boys explored Providence.  I think Jane decided that Brown was her favorite of the three schools we toured in the east.  It is another beautiful school and campus with amazing history.

Friday and it's PERFECT weather brought us back to the beach.  It is crazy how many people can fit on one beach!  It was crowded, but the waves were great.  The kids boogie boarded for ever.  Thomas was the first to come out and as he was  picking seaweed out of his swimsuit, realized that there were bugs in the seaweed and therefore bugs all over him, including in the swimsuit!  Ted, Jane and Rose followed out of the water not long after him and were horrified to find the same issue!  Needless to say, no one went back in the water!  But Ted made a great sand "chair" and the rest of us relaxed in the sun.

I had the last of three lobster rolls and George's of Galilee on the water, delicious....., but forgot to get a picture of the last one.

Today we packed our bags and left our house in Narragansett to head back to Boston for the night. 

                                                             Our van for the week

We stopped at JFK's birthplace in Brookline, MA.  The home is a National Historic Site.  Jane, Ted and I went in to check it out and found that there were guided tours, but knew that everyone else didn't really have it in them to do another tour, so the three of us just took in what we could.  It was pretty cool to see and imagine Rose and Joe and all of those kids living in that house along with their housemaids.  The Kennedy's sold the house in 1920, but Rose re-purchased the house in 1966, so she could have the home restored to her recollection of it's 1917 appearance when Jack was born.  She donated the home in 1967 to the National Park System.

 Mark and I got the kids settled at the hotel and left to return the rental car.  We decided to make pit stop in downtown Boston, as we hadn't really hit the Beacon Hill area.  We saw the location of the Boston Marathon bombing which was quite surreal.

One last night in Boston.  We will be turning in early as our flight back to Minneapolis leaves at 6:55 a.m.!

It was another fantastic vacation.  As I always like to mention, this is a group of fantastic travelers.  They go with the flow and are open to trying new things, like uber and mass transit.   We don't know what our future travel plans will bring as we have a girl that turns eighteen next year and will be going who knows where to college and may not have the time for us next summer.  I hope that we can continue to travel together as a family for many years to come, as it is some of my favorite time.

Thank you for everything.....Mark, Jane, Rose, Tom and Ted, you are all the best!

Birthday fun

Tuesday found us in Newport, RI for the famous mansions tour. www.newportmansions.org

The history here is just amazing.  The Breakers was built by the Vanderbilt family between 1893-1895 and has just under 63,000 square feet of living space!  Yes, that is right, 63 thousand!

We also visited The Elms, which was completely different from the Breakers, but also quite amazing. The Preservation Society of Newport has done an amazing job with these homes, many of which were slated to be torn down over the years.

Wednesday we took the one hour ferry ride from Point Judith(near our house) to Block Island.

 I seem to find one place on each of our vacations that just hits everything that I love and Block Island was it!  Each shop that we stopped in was more charming than the last.  The scenery and homes were so New England.

We knew that we wanted to rent some mode of transportation, but because we have such different ideas of what would be "fun", some wanted a jeep, others wanted scooters and still others wanted bikes.  In the end, it wasn't our decision, because there were no jeeps available and Jane was not feeling confident with the scooter and having one of her siblings needing to be on the back, so bikes it was!(that was my choice)  And it was GREAT!

 We rode from one end of the island to the other on very hilly terrain, as in hills that you had to get off your bike to walk it up.   Those kids were troopers.  The weather helped because it was the most perfect day, sun was out, but the breeze coming off the ocean was cool.  We saw some amazing sights, probably things that wouldn't have been appreciated from a jeep.  The lighthouse marks the north end of the island and the first settlers arrived in 1661!  They unloaded their cattle off of their ships and had them swim to shore.

When we rode to the south end of the island, there was stopping point where you could walk down(and back up!) 120 stairs to the ocean.  So beautiful.  At the top of these stairs there is a look out point where you can see Montauk, NY.

Block Island is definitely a place that we will return to in the future, most likely to stay right on the island.

Thomas won't be happy about this one, but he has been struggling all trip long without sunglasses and having to have his picture taken into the sun.  The face on this picture is priceless!

Sunny adventures

Sunday we drove to Watch Hill, Rhode Island.  What a beautiful town on the coast.  Of course we had to check out Taylor Swift's $17,000,000 mansion there in town.  It was spectacular!  It's funny how we have visited two of her homes on our trips and we don't even have any Taylor Swift fans!!

                                          Secret passage way to the beach next to her house

 From Watch Hill, we headed further south, to Mystic, CT.  It's kind of fun to be able to go from state to state so quickly.  Mystic is where the movie Mystic Pizza(about three waitresses at a pizza place) is based and partially filmed.  Of course we had to go to the restaurant for lunch.  The pizza was great!

 In Mystic there is a really awesome lift bridge and we just happened to be in the right place eating our ice cream at the right time to get to see it go up!

Today we decided to stick around Narragansett and explore our surroundings.  We walked to the ocean and along the seawall.  It's a great little town.
Some beach time was next at  Roger Wheeler State Beach.

The boys spent some time trying to catch a seagull for me.  I've always wanted to take one home with me.

               Ended the day with a famous Del's Frozen Lemonade, a Rhode Island must have.