Block Island

Last weekend Ethan, Amy and I decided to drive down to RI and take the ferry out to Block Island for the day. We decided that we would bring our bikes, since it's a pretty bike-friendly island, so we strapped them onto Amy's car and headed our around 7:20am Sat morning for the drive down.

 More traffic than I would have expected-- we actually wound up cutting it a bit close when it came to getting onto the ferry. Towards the end of the drive both Amy and I were basically yelling at Ethan to drive more aggressively so that we would get there in time (not even remotely setting a good example for the learner in the family).  I don't think we were the very last people onto the ferry, but we did not exactly leave a lot of extra time.

Nice weather -- slightly overcast but still mostly sunny. Full ferry; many people looked as though they were basically going to head to the beach and just plan themselves there for the day; there were a few families that had more baggage/belongings for a longer stay.

On the ferry:

We arrived at the dock, grabbed a couple of maps, then headed to the southern end of the island to check out the lighthouse. The island is surprisingly hilly-- way more up and down than Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Steep drop-off on the southern end of the island with big cliffs. We clambered down a big set of stairs and explored for a bit, the decided to make our way back.
Out and about:

South coast of the island:

Lunch in the center of town at a restaurant that Ethan had scoped out ahead of time (fishes sandwiches; not bad). In the afternoon we did a more extensive bike tour, then parked our bikes and did some of the hiking trails. The trails were in fact not all that interesting; they looked good on the map but turned out to be sort of featureless paths running through dense underbrush. After that we decided to hit the beach: we biked over to the east end of the island to the big town beach and settled in for some swimming. There were a lot of people there, but the beach was big enough that it didn't feel all that crowded.  I rented a boogie board and Ethan spent a couple of hours surfing with it. The ocean was very cool but not freezing, so we were able to stay in a while.

At around 4 it started to get more overcast and we felt a couple of raindrops, so we packed up and caught the early ferry. On the way home we dropped Ethan off at Regis College in Weston-- he was meeting up with friends to see a show at the youth theater there ("Two Gentlemen from Verona", a musical).

Long day, but a nice outing.