Provenience Rhode Island

Rogers Williams Zoo in Provenience Rhode Island was founded in 1872, and is one of the oldest zoos in the nation. This Zoo is home to over 100 different species of animals and many of them are considered rare. We spent the day wandering around the zoo and around Provenience Rhode Island! Beautiful City!

Massachusetts... then to Connecticut.. Barkhamsted Connecticut to be precise...not to much going on around there so we spent our days exploring the countryside, we drove thru some awesome towns but, by far, the best was Collinsville and West Simsbury Ct, it was a beautiful small town and as we walked around we saw Farmington River Reservoir and in a small still pond, that flowed around some old building was some river otters, a mother and her baby... I was so excited to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat! 

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Next came Pennsylvania, Jane spent one whole day looking for a campsite for us over the holiday weekend, ( Labor Day) but the only one she could find was in a remote location in Shunk Pennsylvania...Buttermilk Falls...it was a beautiful campground, Pierre and I hiked to Buttermilk Falls then we walked along the river for a couple of miles..we saw quite a few falls and I saw...what I think was..a dinosaur fossil, footprint..thats my story and I'm sticking to it!

The river was beautiful and we met up with some men that were fishing for trout! 

There's not too much to do in Shunk Pennsylvania..which is in Sullivan County (all 452 sq miles) is the least populated county in Pennsylvania and it only has one stop light in the whole county..so if we needed anything we ended up driving a long way for it!

We did go to a car/air show in Eagles Mere Pennsylvania, we saw some beautiful bi-planes, they took them up and did some cool tricks with them! There was a huge warehouse that had about 50 or 60 old cars! 

I have to say...I was not sad to leave Shunk Pa. I was so ready to get back to civilization! 

NEW JERSEY HERE WE COME!

New Bedford Whaling Museum

After Boston we headed for Cape Cod this is a hooked shaped peninsula on the Massachusetts coast. Cape Cod has been the home of the Wampanoag Indians for many centuries, they survived off the sea, were accomplished farmers and they were the Indians who helped the Pilgrims, who arrived in the fall of 1620. 

Much of the Atlantic seacoast of Cape Cod consists of wide, sandy beaches and because Pres John F Kennedy summered here and owned a home in Hyannis Port, in 1961 he made a significant portion of this coastline into the Cape Cod National Seashore that protected it from private development and preserved it for public use. The Kennedy's still use their summer compound. Lots and lots of people here! We never made to the National Seashore due to road work and the amount of cars on the road, miles and miles of backed up traffic! We detoured off the main highway and found a small two lane road that ran along the north coast of Cape Cod and we saw some of the cutest villages! We stopped at a old general store where Pierre got some of the best fish stew ever..and behind the store we found a old train station were there were old train cars and caboose, all in all a great day! 

We drove to Plymouth Ma to see Plymouth Rock, this is the traditional site of the disembarkation of the Pilgrims who founded this colony in 1620. Now...there is no records that this rock is truly "the rock" but this rock now occupies a prominent spot in American tradition and has been interpreted as a symbol both of the virtues and flaws of the first English people who colonized New England. 

 The Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts is a must see! It houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of scrimshaw art in the world! Scrimshaw is an folk art and can be done on almost any surface, but the sailors used whales teeth and the bone to carve their art because it was readily available and Scrimshaw essentially was a leisure activity for whalers. Because the work of whaling was very dangerous at the best of times, whalers were unable to work at night, this gave them a great deal more free time. Early scrimshaw was done with crude sailing needles and candle soot, ink or tobacco juice was used to bring the etched design into view. 

Whaling was a horrific job and men would leave their families for years at a time and sometimes they abandoned the ship at foreign ports and never returned!

Eventually, kerosene, petroleum, and other fossil fuels became much more popular and reliable than whale oil and with that the industry has plummeted...thank goodness! But I want my readers to know that Norway, Iceland and Japan still hunt whales today! Horrible!

Coastal Cuties

So many coastal towns, I lost count... Bar Harbor, Bucksport, Penobscot, Searsport, Belfast, each one has its own unique charm. Of course everyone has heard of Bar Harbor, but this one was my least favorite...it was charming..no doubt..but soooo many people, we could not even find a place to park so we could walk around. We had just come off Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia National Park, so we were hungry and looking for a place to have lunch, no luck in Bar Harbor, so onward we went. We ended up in a super cute little town called Mount Desert. The rain was letting up a bit and the fog was rolling in, it was magical! 

Belfast was my favorite and the place that our good friends Carl and Carly Zaniboni call home. They have a house just outside of Belfast, in Merrill. It was awesome, just what you would think a cabin in the woods should look like..It was so cute🏡

To get to Belfast you have to cross the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, this is a cable stayed bridge that crosses the Penobscot River, it is 2,120 ft long and it is the first observation bridge tower in the US and at 420 ft tall that makes it the tallest public bridge observatory in the world...it was so cool.. you can ride a elevator to the top and when you get there you can see Cadillac Mountain in (Acadia National Park).

Next to the bridge is Fort Knoxx, (not the money one)...rats..

This fort was named after Major Henry Knoxx, Americas first Secretary of War! 

Belfast also has The Blue Alpaca, there you can pet the Alpaca, they recently had a baby and boy was he cute! Just the right size to fit into Esprit....really

In  Demariscotta Me. we jump on a boat and sailed to Monheagan Island to see the wild puffin... we only saw about a dozen or so puffin, but the sail was wonderful and a puffin expert from project puffin sailed with us and told us a lot about puffins. Project Puffin is an effort originated by Dr. Stephen Kriess, he wanted to restore the puffin to the islands in the Gulf of Maine, and between 1973 and 1986, young puffins were transplanted from Great Island to Eastern Egg Rock and they successfully fledged. The  total population has reached 104 pairs in 2012, so it has been a success. It was so cool to see them in the wild!