No fog today. Calm, cloudy, and cool, but good visibility. We took our bikes ashore in a launch and rode around. First time I'd been on my bike since the accident, but this time I wore elbow pads.
Block Island is about six miles long and three miles wide. In 1661, it was settled by a small group from the Massachusetts Colony who wanted to create a different type of society. There had been Native Americans living here for centuries, of course. We went by the place where the Europeans first settled. They had a large fresh-water pond but lived in caves and primitive shelters.
We were surprised how many ponds and small lakes there are on this little island. They're all over. Lovely scenery, too. Green trees and bushes and grass. Lots of hills. Quite different from Nantucket, which is mostly flat and treeless.
There are miles of paved road, and we rode just about all of them. There were lots of other people on bicycles and mopeds. We saw a group of about half a dozen young bicyclists coming towards us. All of a sudden, one of the girls flew up in the air and crashed to the ground! Somehow or other, she had managed to get her foot caught between the spokes of her front wheel!!!??? Fortunately, she was wearing a helmet. She landed on her head on the pavement, but her head wasn't damaged. She seemed to have broken some ribs and maybe some other bones. Of course, her friends stopped to help her, and we stopped, too. Roy flagged down a passing car. The driver drove down the road until he found a policeman. The police car arrived within minutes and called an ambulance, which also arrived within minutes. Poor kid. Her holiday's ruined.
We stopped at Mohegan Bluff and the old Southeast Lighthouse. What a view! In 1590, warring Indians drove 40 braves of another tribe off the bluff to their deaths. The bluffs are 168 feet high. They have been steadily eroding. Last year, the big stone lighthouse had to be moved back 240 feet to keep it from falling into the ocean. That must have been quite a project.
We stopped in the town of Shoreham for lunch and then rode out to the north end of the island. Walked out to the old lighthouse that was built in 1867. The first lighthouse, built in 1829, was too close to the point and took too much pounding from the sea, so they dismantled it and built another lighthouse farther inland. Unfortun-
ately, it was too far inland and led boats into the land instead of away from it, so they built a third lighthouse. This one, like the first, was too far out on the point. Finally, they built the present lighthouse, which was used for over a hundred years. Now it's a museum.
Hundreds of boats have come to grief on Block Island. One problem was that skippers would mistake the Block Island Light for the Point Judith Light, eight miles to the north, so they'd try to stay south of it and would run right into Block Island.
Walked out to the point and watched the waves coming from both sides of the island and crashing into each other. Quite spectacular!
Rode back to the launch dock, but there were so many people in line, we figured we'd never get on with our bicycles, so we rode over to the other launch at Champlin's Marina. Not so many people waiting there. When the launch came in, we were able to get on it and eventually got back to the boat. We decided taking our boats ashore was more hassle than we cared to go through a second day, so Roy folded them up and put them away, while I fixed supper.
A guy on a neighboring boat came over in his dinghy and borrowed a flashlight. Roy let him have two flashlights. I hope he returns them before he leaves.
We had a perfect view from Jofian's deck of the fireworks display on the other side of the harbor. For such a small town, they put on quite a display. Boats all over the harbor were blowing their horns.
When the official display ended, some boaters started setting off their own fireworks, and Little Boy Roy just couldn't resist the temptation to fire a couple of old flares, even though I kept warning him not to. Fourth of July or no Fourth of July, it's against the law to shoot off flares unless you're signaling for assistance for a vessel in distress. Roy knew that, of course, but he shot them off anyway. All of a sudden, here came a harbor patrol boat with its blue light flashing. Fortunately, he let Roy off with a warning. If the Coast Guard had caught him, Roy would have been in serious trouble.
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