Meandering the Country

August 26-29, 2022 Rhode Island is nicknamed “The Ocean State” which confused me a little!  Being only 40 miles long and 30 miles wide, certainly there are other states we think of when we picture the ocean!  It turns out that Rhode Island has 400 miles of coastline, making its nickname perfectly appropriate!  To experience a little bit of the shoreline, we drove to Newport and hiked a portion of their Cliff Walk.  While we only walked about a mile of its 3.5 mile path, what we saw was beautiful!  We parked at Easton’s Beach and walked to the iconic Forty Steps before running into a detour due to storm damage on a section of the trail.  We could have easily taken the detour and experienced more of the trail; however, time was a bit of a constraint and we decided to branch off at that point and see a little more of Newport. Easton Beach! A popular lunch spot along the Cliff Walk. The iconic Forty Steps lead you to the rocky shoreline! About a mile from the C...

August 19-26, 2022 This was actually our second trip to the Plymouth/Boston area.  In 1996, we did an east coast vacation in our pop-up camper.  Brandon was twelve years old, Lauren was ten, and Maggie was five.  It is one of our favorite family vacations!  When Lauren saw we were heading there again, she thought it was time she and Adam brought Emma and Eli to visit Massachusetts!  It was beyond incredible to have Lauren, Adam, Emma and Eli join us for this next trip to the area! Anna's Harborside Grille As luck would have it, Captain John Boats is still in business and we were able to book a cruise with the same company that we did 26 years ago!  Once again, Captain John did not disappoint!  We saw humpback whales (sometimes three at a time!), fin whales, a mola mola and many dolphins during our four-hour cruise!  It was pretty cool to be taking the same whale watch cruise with two of our grandchildren that we did with our children so many year...