Rhode Island part 1

We traveled to Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts for fall break this year. Why? Because have never been there. Day 1 was actually flying into Providence Rhode Island and getting our rental for the weekend. Natalie at the Hertz desk was awesome and gave us some great information about the area. She directed to the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular, and a couple other places to check out while we were in town. We loaded the car up and headed for Dartmouth MA, where we were basing out of. It was only 40 minutes down the road and with the help of GPS we found our hotel easily. The entrance was not as easy and we drove by it as it was covered by growth. Turning around and getting to the desk, the helper was nice but not a great amount of help, we reserved top floor as always and they had us on floor one. When we asked to be moved up to the top floor she said she didn’t have the authority to do that. Really?! I immediately came back with, "when will the manager in so we can get this fixed?"  She was quick to fix it after the question; this was only the beginning of the nightmare in the Best Western of Dartmouth. We got to our room and set up for the week.

We were hungry after our day of travel and we went to one of the local burger shops for a quick dinner, I found this place online and it had good reviews. Max’s Burgers in Dartmouth, local and friendly. The prices were reasonable and portions were okay, but definitely not Chubby’s. We ate and thanked them for their help and started to look around for other places of interest in Dartmouth. The sunset early and we headed back the hotel only to find out in an empty hotel they placed the other patrons right next to us. The walls of this place were paper thin. The nightmare only gets better as the weekend progresses.

Day 2 of our adventure took us to Martha’s Vineyard. Sally really wanted to visit the island and see the sights. We went to Wood’s Hole where the only Ferry running to Martha’s was leaving from and got ourselves boarded by 9:30 am. The ferry ride over was nice, the morning air was brisk but not bad. We got to the harbor at MV and disembarked and started looking for the tour buses. Did I mention it is out of season? Yep most of the lines were shut down for the winter, but we did find a lady on the street corner setting up tours. We got set up and boarded the van for our 3 hour tour, kinda sounds like Gilligan’s Island….not quite that bad. Our bus driver "Mr. Howell" was okay but pretty stale. He showed us where all the schools and libraries were on the island….lol.

He actually took us to all the towns on the island and pointed out interesting facts about each one and who lived there and when they bought the house. He took us to a couple beaches and by the lighthouses on the island. The coolest town was Oakbluffs where the Gingerbread houses are located. They were built on the original tent sites of the Method Church grounds. Cool little homes, and I was so intrigued with them I didn’t get a picture of them! Definitely the highlight of the tour. He showed us where the presidents played golf and stayed when they vacationed there on our dime. This place is expensive he said the food and supplies were 25% higher because of transportation.

 

 

The last stop he took us to was Gay Head Lighthouse. With the scenic over looks and cliffs it was beautiful. The only part of the day we wished we had done was to take our car over to the island, the tour ended to quickly and without transportation you can’t see much. The ferry cost for the car was $65 each way and we thought we would be okay but we weren’t. Pay the toll and take your car to the island especially in the off season, we easily spent more than the toll with the tour and tip and cost of the ferry ride over. They get you both ways, they aren’t round trip fares. It was good to see Martha’s Vineyard.

 

 

That evening we went back into Providence to see the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular at the Roger Williams Park and Zoo. This was one thing that Natalie said we needed to see. She wasn’t wrong.

One of the coolest displays of pumpkins I have ever seen. With over 5000 hand carved and painted pumpkins this was very cool. Each section of the tour had a theme that the pumpkins were either carved or painted to represent the theme and they had music to match the themes. The first theme was Nobel peace prize winners, the next theme was musicians that had passed away, then onto horror films old time ones, and then cartoon characters and then stamps and the last was hero’s.

Some great craftsmanship was displayed and artistic talent. The tour was as long as you wanted it to be all self-guided. We made it there as the gates opened so it wasn’t too crowded. As we left the rain started and we were happy to miss it.

 

We were hungry and started looking for places to eat. We couldn’t find anything in the area so we went back to Dartmouth and ate at Not Your Average Joe’s. A great little restaurant with good variety of food. The best place we ate the whole weekend. We finished up and went back to the hotel to find it fuller tonight with travelers and they placed them all around us, did I mention this place had walls that were paper thin. We need ear plugs!