It’s been a quieter week this week as we further explored Rhode Island and then moved through Connecticut to Central Massachusetts.
On our last day in RI we went on a Lighthouse Cruise around Narragansett Bay which is the huge bay that Rhode Island surrounds. We went past 10 lighthouses such as the one by the Newport Bridge called Plum Point Lighthouse.
We also sailed into Newport Harbour past all the mega yachts and also the site where the Newport Jazz festival is held every September.
There were boats everywhere and huge super yachts tied up in the lovely dockside area.
Then it was time to leave RI and we drove through Connecticut State and up into Central Massachusetts, which was good as we have learnt how to spell it now. We encountered near our campground scenes of utter devastation and then remembered the terrible tornado that had cut a swathe through the area on June 1st.
Over a 40 mile by 200 yard wide strip, every tree had been pulled out of the ground or stripped of its branches, houses demolished, vehicles destroyed and people killed. It was horrific to see what damage had been caused. Luckily our campground was a mile or two off its track and spared. It was a lovely quiet place and we stopped for four days and didn’t do very much in the sultry heat. We did drive around one day and admired the lovely countryside and villages with their English names like Northampton, Worcester, Sturbridge and more American sounding ones like Belchertown. We visited the world’s largest candle store – Yankee Candles and made our own layered scented candle before having a picnic lunch at the top of a nearby hill called Mt Sugarloaf, where we looked down over the wide Connecticut River with the Berkshire Mountains in the distance.
The river along with the Hudson river which we crossed twice today are the two main rivers in the North East of the US and along which the first settlers travelled.
Everywhere we see rolling hills covered with green woods stretching into the way beyond. It is very pretty.
Today we drove 250 miles to Upstate New York as the Americans called the area of New York close to the Canadian border. We are in the Adirondack Mountains, part of the great Appalachian Range that stretches from Canada to Georgia and are here for a week on the banks of the Ausable River. Other than a few late afternoon thunderstorms the forecast is good.
