Upcoming

We are headed to Boston for the weekend and are looking forward to fun and good food. One of T's friends from college will be out there too, so we are looking forward to seeing her as well. Pictures of that to come!

Providence Court House

Penguins and Flamingos

The Zoo

Last Sunday, we went to the Providence Zoo and took some of the guys with us. It was fun, although the zebras were locked up. There were even penguins, and I have a new favorite creature. It is a tree kangaroo (I think.) Here are a few pictures, but I will try to put up an album. We went to walk in downtown Providence, but either we didn't know where to go, or it is a ghost town there on Sundays.

Gillette State Park

This is the former retirement property of William Gillette, no connection to the razor people. He was a pretty cool guy. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was having trouble getting his Sherlock Holmes picked up by Broadway/playhouses, so Gillette took it in hand and made the changes necessary for it to be conducive to the stage. He then went on to play Sherlock around 1030 times over the course of his career. It is due to his implementation of his personality that we owe our Sherlock hat and pipe to. His castle is pretty cool. HE had everything done by hand, including all the carpentry. Every light switch in his house is made to look like a railroad switch, and he laid something like 3 miles of train track around his property and had a mini train. they have since turned it into walking paths, very pretty. Anyway, his house is made of rock, wood and these rush mats on the walls. He wasn't too ostentatious, as in giant rooms etc, but his house was beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice. It was really fun to go and see. I'm going to try to put up one of those albums that T has figured out, but you may have to check back in a day or two.

Connecticutisms

Every state in the nation seems to have a unique name for some things, and here are some of CT's. T and I went to get lunch our first day here, and came across grinders. It sounded like a sandwich, but there was a sandwich section on the menu, so I finally asked the counter guy what the difference was. Apparently, a sandwich is exactly that...white, wheat or rye bread anyone? and a grinder is a sub sandwich. Interesting, but almost every eating establishment around here, including the pizza places, offer grinders.

Another thing they have here are carriages instead of shopping carts. The first time I saw "return carriages here" I will admit that my mind was picturing carts with a horse pulling them through the store, and it definitely hit my funny bone (even though I knew they were talking about shopping carts. Oh well, Those are all the ones I know for now.

In driving, each lane has it's own light, and many of the on and off ramps are backwards to what one would find as the norm in the west. For instance, our exit going north is on the left hand side of the highway, so you have to stay in the fast lane to exit. But the on ramp puts you on the 6 lane bridge, on the left side, so in order to go to town, you have the length of the bridge to swoop across to the exit. Makes for some interesting driving.

New Bike

This is my new bike. It is really nice, and I really like it. It is only a 16" frame, so it fits my back and shoulders and arms really well. I've never had a bike that truly fit, except for maybe in my youth as a kid. It rides really well. The only disappointment was that I ran over some kind of thorn on my first ride, but the good is that I learned how to change and patch and inner tube. Hopefully, I won't have to do that again for a while, but who knows. I'm not sure the color will come out in the picture. It is maroon and "pearl" and much better colors than any of the other women's bikes. (I can also carry this one down and up stairs better than my last, because it is a little lighter.) It also has great shocks in the front. I put a picture of it next to T's bike too, so you can get a little bit of an idea about it's size.

More Acadia Pictures

T is getting the hang of this new album program. Here are more pictures of Acadia, ME.

New Picture Opportunities

T has found a neat way to share our pictures online, so if you would like to see more pics of our trip to Mt. Katahdin in Maine, click here.

Cape Cod

T and I went to Cape Cod last weekend and had a good time. The rain held off until we were eating dinner on Saturday night, so that was nice. It is a beautiful place, albeit a bit touristy in the summer. I was disappointed at first because it wasn't like I thought it would be, but we took the scenic highway off the cape instead of the main one, and it was much more like I thought it would be. I highly recommend that scenic one, because it is pretty, although you may hit more traffic. Anyway, we had fun riding both the Cape Cod rail trail and the Cape Cod Canal trail on our bikes. (although T ran the canal one..about 13 miles or so.) We went to go see the National seashore which was beautiful and experienced Provincetown, the place where the old and new definitely come together. Our campground was nice (it even had showers), and we were right off the rail trail. We had some girls in the site next to us who would go clubbing at night, sleep in and go bike to the beach and start the whole circle over again. Crazy. On Sunday, while we were eating breakfast and packing up, we got to see people riding by on the trail toward the finish of the pan massachusetts bike challenge. They go very fast and are really polite. (They also got up at 4:30am to finish before it could rain more. Dedication.)

National Seashore

The National Seashore was very pretty, although it had limited hiking and biking. It was mostly a place to enjoy the beach and areas of protection for water fowl etc. There was an old coast guard station there, that is now used for private groups or something, we saw a bike tour starting off from there. Looked like a cool place to stay. I would definitely have lobbied to be stationed here, or at the other still running Cape Cod coast guard station.

Cape Cod Rail Trail

On Saturday, T and I rode south down the CCRT which spans 28 miles of the island. We didn't ride the whole thing, but we did take some tangents off of it to the National Seashore and to Nickerson State Park and do some biking in those two parks. I think we rode about 30 miles total that day. A new record for me! This is the way to see the Cape, and there are lots of people riding around.

Provincetown houses

Provincetown

We went up to Provincetown for dinner. The AAA guidebooks are pretty good at finding good places to eat. I will admit that I can be a bit picky at times, but there will usually be one that strikes my fancy. This one was down an alley way in a residential part of town, and it took up the basement of an apartment complex, and part of the upper part of the old house turned apartments. The dining room was down some stairs in a low light (but nice) area. The lights at each table were covered by bronze painted colanders, cheese graters or baskets, and instead of dried garlic and such hanging around, there were bottles of chianti with that bamboo or something around them. The food was great! I had a bolonese made the real way with beef, pork and veal (so scrumpious), and T got the veal parmesana with spaghetti. They were excellent, and perfect after our long bike ride.

A frog eating bird?

OK really it is a frog eating shadow from T's hand. We saw all sorts of little frogs when we hiked part of the Pachaug State Forest two weeks ago.