Ridiculous Road Trip #2 Day 52-53 Rhode Island

May 21

Since our next campground was only an hour away, we took a rare slow morning around the campground. Before we headed out, we got meet folks in a new-to-them rPod, toured their cute rv, offered advice on some typical fix-its for their camper, and gave a tour of our RV as well.

Then we headed out to a weird campground in Rhode Island, Charlestown Breachway. This is totally not our usual style of campground (lots of rigs packed in tightly with absolutely no amenities), but the location was totally worth it for a few nights!

Not my photo, but isn’t this a bizarre campground?!

We set up camp, and then headed down past the Breachway to the ocean, and braved some very cold, super challenging (at least to us) surf. We didn’t notice the cold so much as we body boarded and got the heck beat out of us by the waves. It was foolish and incredibly fun! 

After recovering from our time in the waves, we headed into Providence, hiked around the old town a bit, had some delicious dinner, and then went and made some pint glasses!! Well, with a lot of help from the Gather Glass Studio artists, we assisted in making some pint glasses. 

May 22

Although the surf was a lot calmer, we got in another boogie board session in the cold, cold waves. And, since I was slightly less terrified of the surf, I managed to get at least this one video of Doug, before I joined him in the waves. I stitched up a few videos here of the surf and the campground. 

Doug’s seaside finds

Before we headed back to Providence to pick up our finished pint glasses, we stopped at the “Fantastic Umbrella Factory”, a collection of funky little shops, plus two emus and a bamboo forest.  

Doug’s salt water curls

Our fancy new pint glasses

Rhode Island!

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Ridiculous Road Trip #2 Day 50-51 Connecticut

May 19

We left our New Jersey campsite painfully early, with the plan of skirting New York City and escaping before the worst of the morning rush hour. We were surprisingly successful, and managed to cross into Connecticut by 7:30am. 

Dawn over Manhattan 

A bit fuzzy, Salt Rock State Forest Campground

The ominous entrance to the hiking trail

Shetucket River

The most epic campfire ring!

May 20

It was a rainy day, and our neighbors were pretty loud, so we headed into town (Lisbon, CT) for the day. After 5 or more years of losing and finding a Panera gift card, we finally managed to spend it (and it still worked) and then headed to spend the rainy afternoon watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Oddly enough on our last Ridiculous Road Trip, six years ago, we spent a brutally hot desert afternoon watching Guardians 1! And then I treated myself to a bit of pampering, with an excellent pedicure and leg massage. Delightful!!

Connecticut!

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Ridiculous Road Trip #2 Day 46-49 Delaware and New Jersey

May 15-16

We headed out early for travel day that started out with tunnel bridges. Doug was very excited for the bridge-tunnel-bridge, bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge we needed to take to get to Delaware. He had the perfect poem, of course!

BRIDGE OR TUNNEL?

Channel project.

A tunnel would be possible,

   a bridge would also do,

but wouldn't it be better to

   amalgamate the two?

Let bridge and tunnel undulate

   in waves from shore to shore,

keeping green the memories

   of those who went before.

    from the Grooks of Piet Hein

And as we drove on toward our campsite, on the other side of the bridges-tunnels-bridges, we were chasing this very odd straight line cloud formation. Very cool!

We spent a few restful days at Trap Pond State Park.  It was a great campground with nice trails and great trees for hammock setups. The only bummer was that there was no swimming in the pond. 

May 17

Doug got in an early morning run, then we said goodbye to Delaware.

We managed our third Wagon Wheel lyrics bingo as we skirted Philadelphia. 

“I caught a trucker out of Philly, had a nice long toke”

I was super excited that we would be camping for a few nights in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey! I’ll admit, that this excitement may have been originally prompted by Stephanie Plum’s adventures in “Plum Spooky” (a “between the numbers” novel by Janet Evanovich), but the pine barrens are an incredibly cool, rare, coastal ecosystem!

After I got a quick hike in and then we headed out for dinner in Atlantic City. 

Doug is pretty excited about his Lobster Thermodore

And then Doug surprised me with what claims to be America’s “oldest surviving roadside attraction”, Lucy the Elephant

Is it just me, or are those windows in an unfortunate place? 

May 18

We spent another lovely day, where I was thrilled to hike endlessly on nearly completely level, pine-needled, springy trails. The weather was lovely and cool, and the scenery was gorgeous. The only thing lacking was that we didn’t have any Jersey Devil sightings. ah well. 

Pine pollen!

Pine Bog

New Jersey!

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