Memorial Day weekend jaunts
Most weekends are three days long for me since I usually don't go in to work on Fridays, but this three-day weekend is different. First of all, I DID go to work on Friday, and second, Lee gets three days off--highly unusual.
We did our usual run of putzing around town on Saturday. Those are some of the best days: just kind of running around town together, picking up some crazy thing Lee bought on ebay or going to the fabric store or buying groceries or whatever.
Today after church, we drove to Misquamicut, Rhode Island. I've been wanting to go to the beach.
*
When I had guests in Pensacola from out of town, sometimes we'd go to the beach and my guests would say, "Oh, the ocean! I've never been to the ocean before!" To which I would always reply, "It's not really the ocean; it's just the Gulf of Mexico." I'd never actually been to an ocean before, myself, but now I have! At least, I think Misquamicut's beach counts as the ocean; Yahoo maps shows the body of water to actually be called "Block Island Sound," but the shore doesn't appear to be really blocked by much of anything. There's some island waaay out there, but... well, whatever. It counts in my mind, anyway. The street we drove up and down was called "Atlantic Avenue." So.
*
The beach was very crowded; more crowded, I think, than Pensacola Beach on its busy days (though I usually avoid Pensacola Beach on busy days, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about). There was no free parking, which annoyed me. We paid ten bucks to park, and we only stayed maybe an hour.
The businesses on the beach seem far less commercial than the businesses on Pensacola Beach; a big plus in my book. I saw not one Alvin's Island or Hooters, not a Hilton or a Marriott, but plenty of businesses all the same.
The sand is less the white sugary color Pensacola Beach claims and more the like the grainy "Sugar in the Raw" brand. And you don't find seashells; you find rocks! How novel!
I let the water wash up on my feet once, and that sent a chill to the core of my being. I doubt on the hottest day of summer I will ever want to dive right in. Lee and I were overdressed compared to everyone else; we saw lots of bikini bods, but I never felt compelled to take off my sweater. Even Lee, who said he wished he'd worn shorts, also said he didn't think he'd feel comfortable in a bathing suit; the air was cool--but nice.
After soaking in the beach for a while, we decided to head out, and on our way, we stopped by Mystic Seaport. Lee's been wanting to visit that for as long as we've been here. Since they were about to close, we got in at half price and still got to explore for about an hour and a half.
This is the Captain Morgan (tee!):
Various shots.
A different boat; not the Morgan:
Finally, pooped, we headed home.
Tomorrow, we may just hang out and be worthless, but I hope we straighten up a little around the apartment, because folkgirl is coming to visit this week. We have plans to set up a futon in the sunroom for guests to sleep on (Sharon, my stepdaughter, is coming later in June--I'm really stoked about that visit), so we need to get on that. Then the floodgate of visitors can be thrown open (hint, hint).
* I'm not sure why these pictures turned out smaller than the rest. I've been saving my sized pictures as PNG files lately because they reduce nicer than JPGs, but ever since I started doing that, sometimes random ones translate smaller through Photobucket. This happened in my downtown Waterbury post, too, and I don't quite know what to make of it. Any tips?
We did our usual run of putzing around town on Saturday. Those are some of the best days: just kind of running around town together, picking up some crazy thing Lee bought on ebay or going to the fabric store or buying groceries or whatever.
Today after church, we drove to Misquamicut, Rhode Island. I've been wanting to go to the beach.
*
When I had guests in Pensacola from out of town, sometimes we'd go to the beach and my guests would say, "Oh, the ocean! I've never been to the ocean before!" To which I would always reply, "It's not really the ocean; it's just the Gulf of Mexico." I'd never actually been to an ocean before, myself, but now I have! At least, I think Misquamicut's beach counts as the ocean; Yahoo maps shows the body of water to actually be called "Block Island Sound," but the shore doesn't appear to be really blocked by much of anything. There's some island waaay out there, but... well, whatever. It counts in my mind, anyway. The street we drove up and down was called "Atlantic Avenue." So.
*
The beach was very crowded; more crowded, I think, than Pensacola Beach on its busy days (though I usually avoid Pensacola Beach on busy days, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about). There was no free parking, which annoyed me. We paid ten bucks to park, and we only stayed maybe an hour.
The businesses on the beach seem far less commercial than the businesses on Pensacola Beach; a big plus in my book. I saw not one Alvin's Island or Hooters, not a Hilton or a Marriott, but plenty of businesses all the same.
The sand is less the white sugary color Pensacola Beach claims and more the like the grainy "Sugar in the Raw" brand. And you don't find seashells; you find rocks! How novel!
I let the water wash up on my feet once, and that sent a chill to the core of my being. I doubt on the hottest day of summer I will ever want to dive right in. Lee and I were overdressed compared to everyone else; we saw lots of bikini bods, but I never felt compelled to take off my sweater. Even Lee, who said he wished he'd worn shorts, also said he didn't think he'd feel comfortable in a bathing suit; the air was cool--but nice.
After soaking in the beach for a while, we decided to head out, and on our way, we stopped by Mystic Seaport. Lee's been wanting to visit that for as long as we've been here. Since they were about to close, we got in at half price and still got to explore for about an hour and a half.
This is the Captain Morgan (tee!):
Various shots.
A different boat; not the Morgan:
Finally, pooped, we headed home.
Tomorrow, we may just hang out and be worthless, but I hope we straighten up a little around the apartment, because folkgirl is coming to visit this week. We have plans to set up a futon in the sunroom for guests to sleep on (Sharon, my stepdaughter, is coming later in June--I'm really stoked about that visit), so we need to get on that. Then the floodgate of visitors can be thrown open (hint, hint).
* I'm not sure why these pictures turned out smaller than the rest. I've been saving my sized pictures as PNG files lately because they reduce nicer than JPGs, but ever since I started doing that, sometimes random ones translate smaller through Photobucket. This happened in my downtown Waterbury post, too, and I don't quite know what to make of it. Any tips?