20 Years

Our plan today was to start off driving down to the coast to visit a Rhode Island lighthouse and then meander up the coast and end the day with a visit to another lighthouse .

This lighthouse is just barely in  Rhode Island  and was almost due south of last night's campground. Some people call it the Easterly

lighthouse maybe because it's so far east in the state or because it's near the town of Easterly but the real name is Watch Hill Lighthouse. It's on a little spit of land called Watch Hill because the area was used for watchtowers going back to the Niantic Indians in the early 17th century. The current lighthouse was completed in 1856 and the light was automated in 1986 and can be seen for 16 nautical miles. The Watch Hill area has become a nice beach town and fishing area.

To get the lighthouse we had to park on the main street and then walk down a windy lane between several huge New England styled, weathered shingled houses and then out on the spit of land where Susan is standing. On the way we passed one house that had a very unique fencing. We thought the style may have a name and asked the gardener. Nope, he said that it was something that he made up and hoped people would like. We told him that we like the fence and so did Shadow.

I may have mentioned that I-95 and Hwy US 1 hang along the coast. Now we got on Hwy 1A that is the scenic highway even closer to the coast. When we got to Narragansett, on the map it looked like the town was to the north but driving through all we saw was some beaches and no port or fishing boats. Our trusty GPS led us south to the older part of the town and we saw lots of fishing boats, fish and lobster processing plants and the terminal for the ferry to Block Island

This a real working waterfront! And then we drove over to the Point Judith Lighthouse on the part of town that extends ore than a mile from the Rhode Island coast, marking the entrance to Narragansett Bay too the north and Block Island Sound to the south. In 1857, a new 51 foot brownstone tower and brick dwelling were constructed. Point Judith Light escaped the great hurricane of 1938 although 250 feet of seaway was destroyed. In 2000, a major restoration was performed to restore the lighthouse to excellent condition forth next 100 years.  

        

The heading of this blog is the anniversary that Susan and I are celebrating today. It sure has gone by in a hurry from riding motorcycles to all the National Parks out west when we lived on Las Vegas to now driving the RV up and down the east coast and living in Fernandina Beach. We're still loving each other and looking forward to the next 20 years. 

On the way home - Fisherman's Memorial State Park we stopped at a Rhode Island icon walk up restaurant serving some of the state's best seafood - Iggy's Doughboys and Chowder House. We ordered, waited, along with 15-20 others and then parked the RV and split a half dozen clam cakes, a bowl of clam chowder, a lobster roll and we could only eat a couple of the doughboys  OMG, some kind of good!

Couldn't get Susan to look for the selfie in front of Iggy's