Day trip to Block Island, July 31, 2004. We took the high-speed ferry out of Galilee. At 40mph, the trip takes just 30 minutes (which is 5 minutes longer than it took to disembark the ferry, pack the car and get out of the parking lot)

This was our first trip to Block Island and we didn't quite no what to expect. All the maps were curiously lacking a scale making it difficult to tell how far things were from each other. As you can see from the USGS topo map below, Block Island is only 11 square miles (Nantucket is 47 sq mi and Martha's Vineyard 100 sq mi).

The high-speed ferry takes you past the North Lighthouse and docks in the New Harbor which is in the Great Salt Pond. Most of the shopping and restaurants are in Old Harbor which is just a short bike ride or walk away (we did both, more later). After lunch by the beach at Ballard's Beach Club, we walked out on the Old Harbor breakwater and walked up to the Ocean View Pavilion (site of an old hotel)

Then it was onto the bikes and south along Spring St., which winds along the coast until you reach the Southeast Light. By now it was getting pretty warm and unfortunately we had forgotten to fill oru water bottles. Luckily there was a little lemonade stand set up by the lighthouse. Too bad they had recently suffered a catastrophic loss of all their supplies. No liquid refreshments for us.

Next stop down the road was the Payne Overlook and Mohegan Bluffs. The actual overlook is closed because of erosion problems, but the 150 feet of stairs down to the beach was pretty cool by itself.

Continuing along the Mohegan Trail, and taking a left just when the road turns north and becomes Lakeside Drive we finally found a functioning lemonade stand: $0.25 a dixie cup, self serve. Spent a couple bucks. This was also the entrance to Barlow's Point and Vail Beach. To get down to the beach you have to hunch over and squeeze down through a virtual tunnel through the scrub trees. Once down you find seemingly endless (but fairly rocky) beach in both directions.

Now headed north along Lakeside Dr. we came to the old Indian burial grounds and Fresh Pond. We were going to check out Rodman's Hollow, but the lack of water was starting to take it's toll and we decided to head back to town. Had we known that Rodman's Hollow was sole habitat of the small-mouth Block Island Meadow Vole, maybe we would have gone in for a hike. Then again maybe we wouldn't have.

A little bit past the airport and I got (yet another) flat tire. That's 3 blowouts on 2 tubes in the last couple of months. Guess it's time for a new tire. Anwyay, we walked our bikes back to New Harbor and then walked back to Old Harbor to spend some time shopping and relaxing before our ferry.

Writing this on Sunday, it feels like we had about a 3 day vacation all in one afternoon. It definitely would be worth going back and staying a couple days at some point and enjoying things at a bit slower pace...

You can click on the waypoint labels to see photos

 
 
(if the above doesn't have a map in the background, let me know. It should work if you link directly however: block_island.svg)