Rhode Island still

From Jose 

We are still in Rhode Island. This is where Diane grew up and where her family lives.  I had previously met most of her family and it has been great to see them again and to meet the ones I was missing. The rv is parked in Diane's niece's driveway. Sometimes Diane's niece, Michelle, drives us around and sometimes we have the use of her car while she is at work. The rv is hooked up to electricity only and it is fairly easy to unhook and go, so we have been getting around a lot. Diane's sister Karen took on a great guided tour of Bristol, RI. Diane has a lot of memories of Rhode Island and has shown me places where she lived, went to school or worked. I am new here and don't have such memories, so I look at it from a different point of view. 

I do have a friend in the area, Dawn, who I met in Kanab when she worked a t Best Friends, and her daughter Emily and dog Chachi. She knew we were in the area but one night we showed up at her work in a pizza restaurant. She has not changed any since I've known her, which is a good thing. A few days later we all met for a picnic in Chase Park where the dogs got to run around and even jump in a lake. The weather was perfect. 

I'm not usually the shopping kind but two  stores here deserve special attention. One is Benny's, which is a big general store, like a smaller version of a Walmart but the stuff they sell is more "interesting". I found some parallel pliers that my father used to have when I was growing up and that I had been looking for. The other store is Harbor Freight Tools. We are all familiar with the fliers and ads in magazines but to see all those tools in one place is amazing. Their prices are great. They have lots of tools I would like to buy, most of them I don't really need and could not fit in the rv anyway. But it sure is fun to look.

This part of Rhode Island is made up of different islands, peninsulas, channels etc.  The is water almost anywhere you look. One of my favorite parts is Newport. To get there we go over a cool suspension bridge that is all lit up at night. Many famous people had their "summer cottages" there (54 bedrooms, with a staff of 36). Many of these mansions  have been restored by the Preservation Society of Newport County and are open to the public. Colt state park is a great place to picnic, bicycle or just hang out with a great view of the ocean.

Last night  we went to the 8th Annual Halloween Iron Pour, presented by the Steel Yard and the Iron Guild.  These two organizations promote the art of working with molten iron.  For this show they built a volcano complete with flowing lava (iron) and a miniature village. The volcano destroys the village,with a little help from the students.  See a short video here. It was very impressive and the crowd loved it.

You might recall that we planned this trip so we could spend the spring going up the West Coast, the summer in the northern states, the fall going down the East Coast and the winter in the south, avoiding very cold or very hot weather. We did catch the changing of the leaves in Rhode Island, which is the best. The weather here is starting to get chilly.  It gets down to mid 40s at night. I hope that is as cold as we're going to see.

Stay tuned

Rochester, Boston, Rhode Island

From Jose

I have not posted anything for a long time for two main reasons: 1 we have not had WiFi access.  2 when there was something to report we have been going, going, going. Today is about the first truly relaxed day that I have had.

After our most excellent adventure at Niagara Falls our next stop was Rochester, New York to visit my cousin Marilu. But she was going to be out of town for a few days so we had a few days to kill before we could visit her.

We decided to go explore the finger lakes area east of Rochester. We traveled through Geneva, Canandaigua and stayed one night in Waterloo. All these towns are very pretty, the people very friendly.  The weather is starting to get a little cool. The water in the lakes is very clear and you can see all the pebbles in the bottom and all the fish swimming around.

We finally reached Rochester and got to see my cousin Marilu and her husband VV. He is from india and his name is  difficult for westerners to pronounce, so he goes by VV, his initials. They actually live in a little town named Pittsford. The Erie Canal runs through the middle of town and the rowing teams can be seen working out. The town is very friendly to bicycles dogs and people in general.

VV is a retired college professor but he is still active giving lectures and talks about physics, religion and the relationship between physics and religion. I enjoyed our dinner table conversations very much. I would gladly go to listen to him talk on any subject because he makes his talks very interesting. My cousin Marilu is also a retired college professor from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf , which is located in the Rochester Institute of Technology. We visited her old alma mater and she was greeted by many of her former colleagues. To make the deaf people feel welcome and included when two non-deaf people talk they also talk in sign language. Learning sign language is one of the things in my bucket list. Does anybody know of a deaf person in Kanab who could teach me?

We also got to see the George Eastman House, where the man who founded Kodak lived. We learned a lot about him, what drove him and all his accomplishments. One thing that I thought unusual is that in he endorsed a calendar with 13 months of 28 days and one day (or two in leap years) that don't belong to any month.

By this time we were getting close to Rhode Island, and Diane and was anxious to get there to visit her family. Besides, one of the main things we wanted to see in Maine was Acadia National Park, but thanks to our elected officials the park is now closed. Consequently we did not make too many stops between Rochester and New England.

We did stop in Syracuse, New York to visit my cousin Julian, who is a 4th year student at Syracuse University , and his girlfriend Stephanie. Julian is even further proof that all the men in the Pico family are extremely handsome. I found a picture of him in the web and file name was campuscutie. We went to lunch with them and then they gave us a walking tour of the campus. This campus was founded in 1870 and some of the original buildings are still in use.

Diane could no longer contain herself, so we drove almost 300 miles from Syracuse to Boston in one day. That is by far the longest we have driven in one day. So we arrived at Norwood near Boston where her friend David lives. One of the first things we did in Boston was take a duck tour, on a refurbished WWII army landing craft. We drove around Boston and saw many Boston sights such as the Prudential building, Beacon Hill,  the North Church (where two lanterns signaled Paul Revere that the British were coming by sea), etc. Then the duck took to the Charles River and we saw other sights from the water, such as the  Science Museum,  the Longfellow Bridge, etc.

On a different day we took a day trip to Ogunquit, Maine. Towns in this part of the United States have very interesting names, mostly from Native American origin. There is a one mile walking trail right next to the water and it is very scenic. Also the leaves are changing and it is a great view. We had seen changing leaves for a while, but the changing colors in this part of Maine with truly spectacular.

For our final sightseeing day in the Boston area we went to Edward Gorey's house museum, (A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears) and on to Provincetown, on the very tip of Cape Cod. This is a very eclectic tourist town, with many interesting shops, restaurants, and people. I have wanted to visit Provincetown for a long time and I'm glad I did.

From the Boston area we drove to the Rhode Island area to visit Diane's family and that's where we are now. I will include the details of that part of the trip in the next update, so stay tuned.