2011 Summer Trip to New England #6

Monday was a walk down memory lane for me. We started off by going to the Onlyville New York System Hot Wiener Diner in Providence, RI. We can't come to New England with getting one of these. They are the best anywhere. Even my picky husband, said they were the best wieners he has ever had. The guy in the restaurant was a hoot. When Jim told him he had never been there before, he announced to the other diners he had a virgin in the house. They also serve coffee milk. He gave us a glass free because he says you can't come there without getting the wieners and the coffee milk. We had a great time there and met some other "virgins" there too. This diner is going to be shown on the TV program Food vs Man on August 10th. I've never watched the show but we will try to watch it next month. Next we took a ride to the downtown area of Providence. It really has changed so much. They've added lots of parks, a river walk, and shopping areas. Next we went to the first house I ever lived in on California Avenue. It is the brown two story house below. (For some reason, I can't put these pictures in the right order. ) It doesn't look like it but it is a 2 family home. My grandparents owned this house and they lived on the first floor with my aunts, and we lived on the second floor. I think when I was 7, we moved to Dorchester, Mass for about a year, and when we moved back, my grandparents had moved to another house closer to the city and we lived on the first floor. My grandfather's sister and her husband lived on the 2nd floor. When I was about 10, we moved to Cranston, RI and lived in the white two story house below. That was my favorite house. I loved the neighborhood; we lived on a dead end street and knew all the neighbors; we could walk to school, to the library and to church. I used to sit on the roof of this house outside my bedroom window on the upper right at night and shine a flashlight at the boy across the street. We thought we were doing moss code or something but really we were just copying each other with how many times we flashed the light. When I was about 13, we moved to Warwick, RI to the yellow ranch house. My mom was tired of cleaning two floors of house and wanted a ranch style house. This was the last house I lived in before moving to VA at the age of 15. We ended our journey with a Dell's Lemonade which was just down the street from our Warwick house. We will be exploring more of Cape Cod this week. By the way, the weather has been beautiful here, between 74 and 78 degrees. Hottest day was 85. Hope you all are staying cool.

2011 Summer Trip to New England #5

This was a crazy weekend. Nothing went as planned. Friday we decided to just hang out at the motorhome. It was very relaxing, watching movies, reading and just hanging out with our dogs. They were very happy campers to say the least. On Saturday, we decided to go to the beach. We picked one nearest the campground but it was still 30 minutes away. When we got there the line into the parking lot was a mile long. People were actually sitting on the side of the road, waiting for people to leave the parking lot so they could get a spot. We decided that we would come back on a week day and took a drive through the sea side. I loved looking at all the beautiful homes with all their beautiful gardens. Flowers in bloom everywhere. We ended up going to dinner and then stopped at Walmart for provisions and back to the campground. On Sunday we were going to take a trip to Boston. Jim and I have been following Guy Fiero's Dives, Drive-ins, and Diners throughout the United States. We have his book and have been visiting the various diners noted in the book as we visit the various states. Well it just so happens there are two in Mass; one being in Boston. It's called Mike's City Diner. So before we left, we called to make sure they were open and they were. So off we go. We no sooner got on I495 at exit 2, and immediately came to a stand still. We literally were stopped for 2 1/2 hours. Apparently there was an accident at Exit 3. They had to medivac someone by helicopter and we kept seeing all kinds of big rig tow trucks passing on the shoulder to get to the accident. We figured it must be a tractor trailer to two tractor trailers they way the big rig tow trucks kept arriving. By the time we got to the accident scene we were shocked to see it was a Safari Motorhome. It had run off the highway, down an embankment and rested at the base of some trees. The motorhome didn't looked wrecked from the side that we could see but we don't know what the other side looked like. It didn't look like it rolled so we figured either someone cut them off or the driver had a medical condition that forced him/her off the road. In all our years of Rving, that was only the 2nd wreck we have ever seen. The first one probably really didn't count because it didn't look like any damage done but it did run off the road without damage. So anyways, 2 1/2 hours later we continue on to Boston. We drive up to the restaurant, park the truck, and start into the restaurant, when a guy comes out wheeling a trash can. He goes, sorry folks we close at 3:00. It was 3:45. So there was a restaurant next door. We go in and the waiter says, sorry folks we are only serving drinks until 5:00. Since we were hungry, we decided to leave and look for another place. We took the back roads back toward the camp ground and we came upon Plymouth. So we decided, what the heck, lets go touring. We first had our late lunch at the Lobster Hut. Naturally, I got a lobster dinner. Jim, being true to his not eating fish self, got a chicken salad. We then walked along the coastal walk way and visited Plymouth Rock, as well as the reproduced Mayflower. So we ended up having a nice evening afterall.

2011 Summer Trip to New England #4

Thursday, Jim and I went to Chatham, Cape Cod to visit the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center. The building Jim is standing in front of in the first pic above was built in 1914 by Guglielmo Marconi. It is still in excellent condition as well as the house were all the Morse Code technicians lived while working at this station. I'm not a technical person, but I did find this place quite interesting. Jim of course loved it. After visiting Wellfleet yesterday and seeing the sight of Marconi's first experimental station this was a nice follow up visit. At Wellfleet, Marconi proved for the first time that long distance from America to Europe communications were technically viable. Now at Chatham commercial Maritime radio became a reality on a very large scale. RCA (Radio Corporation of America) acquired the station in 1920. These early stations including one in Nova Scotia communicated with ships and averted many disasters. The stations are credited with sending the Ship Carpathia to save the Titanic survivors. It is interesting to note that David Sarnoff, a young Marconi telegrapher and the man who would later start RCA, took credit for receiving the Titanic SOS, but was found out later to be off duty at that time! Apparently, among his many other talents, Mr Sarnoff was excellent at self promotion! The station was used to great advantage during the war years to warn of German U-boat activity. Jim remembered some of the Morse Code characters and actually saw some test equipment and an early radio that he had personal experience with--I knew he was getting a little wrinkled, but didn't realize he was THAT old! Arrrgh! From there we went to Main Street in Chatham and had lunch at the Captain's Table. Again, I enjoyed some clam chowder and a salad and Jim stuck to his usual BLT. There were lots of little shops along Main Street and we both enjoyed browsing. Jim also found a geocache in town. From there we drove to Hyannis. We found a really nice beach and from there we could see the Kennedy compound. We were about a block away but as you can see, the main house is so big we did get a glimpse of it. On our way home we decided to explore the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory. It was pretty cool and we did buy enough potato chips to get us through our trip this summer.

2011 Summer Trip to New England #3

For the next two weeks we are staying at the Gateway to Cape Cod Outdoor World RV Resort located in Rochester, Ma. Today we drove to Provincetown, Cape Cod. Along the way we stopped in Yarmouthport, Ma. to eat lunch at Hallet's Store. This store was established in 1889 and has been in business for 123 years. It's a

very small store with all the original fixtures, a marble soda fountain, oak cabinets and a tin ceiling. Their ice cream is home made and they sell a variety of old-fashioned soda, frappes, root beer floats and malts. They also make sandwiches. They are known for their Clam Chowder and malts. So of course, I had to have their clam chowder and a chocolate malt. Not being a fish eater of any kind, Jim had a BLT and a chocolate malt. It was definitely a nice treat along our journey today. Our next stop was in Wellfleet to see the site of the very first wireless radio transmission from America to England by President Roosevelt and King Edward VII. Jim being an electrical engineer by trade was very interested in seeing this site. Guglielmo Marconi built this wireless transmission site in January 1903 on the sea cliffs of Wellfleet. When it was built, it consisted of 4 wooden towers 210 feet in height. The power requirements were tremendous. Kerosene-burning engines produced 2,200 volts. When fed to a Tesla transformer, the voltege was stepped up to 25,000 volts-the energy needed to transmit long-wave signals so far. The local residents had to endure the sounds of the crashing spark which could be heard for four miles downwind of the station. The sea cliff was eroding three feet each year threatening the eastern-most towers with collapse. The station was closed in 1917 and in 1920 it was scrapped. From Wellfleet we continued to Provincetown and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon going to all the little shops and watching the street performers. Looking forward to another day on the Cape tomorrow.

2011 Summer Trip to New England #2

Our next stop was Burlingame State Park, Charlestown, RI. There we met up with my cousin, Sherry and her family. My mother and sister also flew in to spend Friday and Saturday nights with us. We really had a good time. We had camp fires and cooked somemores at night. The weather was beautiful. My cousin Dusty and her husband Scott were also camping there. We all went down to the pond and some of the cousins did kayaking and some of us played with our dogs. I had 2 dogs, Sherry had one dog and Dusty had 3 dogs. All the dogs loved the water. But Sherry's dog, Ben was the star of the show. He went out the furthest, chased balls, followed the kayaks around. It was great fun. The second picture shows the difference in the size of dogs we had there. The big beautiful one is Ben and the littlest one was my Yorkie, Baxter. All the rest of the dogs were sized in between these two. It was definitely a family affair

2011 Summer Trip to New England

We are enjoying our RV trip to New England this summer; especially the cooler weather. Our first stop was in Hershey, PA. We stayed at a Thousand Trails RV Resort. It was a very nice resort. We spent our first day at the pool, reading and swimming. Very stressful NOT! One day we took a ride through the country side and I loved seeing all the Amish farms and horses and buggies. Those horse and buggys really clip along. I'd hate to pull out or step out in front on one because they are really fast.

We took a tour to the Hershey Museum. It was really interesting learning how Milton Hershey started the Hershey chocolate company as well as the town. The street lights on Chocolate Ave look like candy kisses. It is really cool. That same day we also toured the Hershey Chocolate Factory. Jim stocked up on lots of chocolate. So to say the least, Jim is in chocolate heaven on this trip. Our friends, Rita and Joe from our Winnebago club, also were camping at this same resort. We had lunch together at the Hershy Hotel restaurant. The hotel is a 5 star hotel and the restaurant was wonderful. After we ate, the guys sat in the lobby (girl watching) and Rita and I enjoyed shopping the wonderful shops in the hotel. Rita found a lovely Vera Bradly laptop cover and I found a wonderful beach hat for the pool. We really had fun shopping. We enjoyed happy hour visits with Rita and Joe and I cooked dinner for them one night. On our last day, Jim and I got pedicures and spent the afternoon at the pool. Life is good.