Oct 7, 2011 - Green Animal Topiary Garden, Linden Place, Colt State Park

Found a nice surprise this morning . My niece Regina and her husband Mike have come up to spend the weekend. Regina always has interesting stories to tell ! After breakfast, Mary and I once again ventured to Bristol to visit more of their famous attractions. We made a stop on the way in Portsmouth at Green Animal Topiary Garden - the oldest topiary garden in the U.S. The house and the gardens sit on 17 acres of prime property overlooking Narraganset Bay. The sad story of the house, built in 1872 by Thomas Brayton, is that once Mr. Brayton's...

Oct 6, 2011 - Blithewold Mansion

Mary and I journeyed to Bristol, Rhode Island today to visit Blithewold - a 45 room "summer retreat" mansion built in 1896 by Pennsylvania coal baron Augustus Van Wickle. Bessie ( Mrs Van Wickle) had a passion for horticulture and designed most of the gardens on the grounds. Those gardens, trees, and shrubs that she so lovingly planted are still beautifully maintained . Her eldest daughter, Marjorie, lived in this house until her death in 1976 when she bequeathed Blithewold to the state. It is amazing how well preserved this house is. Some...

Oct 2, 2011 - Bristol & Lobster

From Meadowlark RV Campground, Middletown, RI ... Sunday, Oct. 2, 2011 - If I stay on the road much longer, I'll be totally useless! I'm just thinking out loud this evening; Tommy would argue that I'm already totally useless...this is an ongoing joke between us. Traveling makes me feel sooo lazy or maybe it's the queen size bed in this motorhome that makes us sleep sooo good each night and feel so reluctant to crawl out of it in the morning, but we've been sleeping until 8:00 a.m. just about every morning. Of course, we're on Eastern...

Sep 3, 2008 - A day of rest in Rhode Island

OK, so it's not exactly Saturday, but Shabbat can also be a state of mind. We slept in late, played scrabble, cooked our own food. We read. In the afternoon we headed out to the beach, had our vegetarian rice crispie treats attacked by sea gulls. Saw amazing jelly fish that look like they have an electric pulse of light shooting threw them (we had seen them before at the Monterey Aquarium), as well as lots of hermit crabs and other cool sea life. It took us over an hour to get the guts up to actually swim in the water (no one else was...