Block Island Adventures - a very Rhode Island place to go

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

July 28, 2022

We were camping near the coast in Rhode Island because we had a special trip planned for today. We're heading to Block Island--a very Rhode Island place to go. We had never heard of Block Island before this summer, but several people had convinced us that we just had to go. So we were up early this morning, and had to break our state campground's rule of "no generators before 8:00 a.m." rule. That's because we had to charge our motor home batteries before we left, and we had to leave by 8:15. It was a thirty-minute drive to Point Judith, Rhode Island, where the ferry leaves for the island. The boat ride costs $24 per adult, and we're paying an extra $14 to take our two bicycles with us.

There are a few spaces on the ferry for cars as well, but it is so expensive that few people will spring for that big ticket. Most day-visitors to Block Island will depend on their legs or bicycles to get them around.

It's a 55-minute ride to go the 17 miles to Block Island. We could have paid double the price and saved half the travel time by going on the high-speed ferry. But at this point in our lives we have more time than money. This tiny island is only 3 miles wide and 7 miles long, but it is a very popular day trip. We've been told that it's a very Rhode Island thing to do, and we are looking forward to it this cloudy morning.

Once we disembarked the ferry and retrieved our bikes, the real adventure began. We were planning to do the 9.5-mile southern loop that will take us to most of the best-known spots on Block Island. Because there are few cars on the island and the speed limit is very low, we aren't too concerned about riding our bikes on the road. What we didn't know was that much of the pedaling when first leaving the harbor was up-hill.

We got a map at the island visitor center, and started our loop. Stop #1 is at the 1661 Hotel and Exotic Animal Farm.

One of the exotic animals is a Zonkey at the farm. Half donkey and half zebra, this is an interesting animal.

It's just a few more pedals to the second stop. We made a quick photo stop at the Spring House Hotel with its views over the ocean.

That's where many of the walkers turned around and went back to town. But bikers like us continued--up the hill--to the Southeast Lighthouse. We should have known that a lighthouse would be built on the highest hill on the island. We ended up walking our bikes up this very big last hill right before the light. Whew!

This brick Victorian lighthouse is a national historic landmark.

The cliff in front of the lighthouse is eroding, and the lighthouse was once precariously close to falling off the 150-foot-tall cliff. But in 1993 this 2,000-ton lighthouse was moved from its original home next to the cliff to its current location. Mark and that big boulder are standing today where the lighthouse once stood.

By standing on that cliff, we could faintly see the row of wind generators through the ocean's fog. A controversial project, this was the first off-shore wind farm. But now it provides a renewable source of energy to Block Island. 

Looking the other direction, we can see our next biking destination--the 150-foot cliffs known as the Mohegan Bluffs. 

Once we made the bike ride to the entrance of the cliffs, we still had to hike down 141 wooden steps to get to the beach.

After the last wooden step, visitors must then navigate down a rocky incline that you can see behind Mark. This challenging trek limits the number of people that get to the water, turning this into an uncrowded beach experience.

We could enjoy the miles of cliffs and rocks as far as we could see, with very few other hardy travelers.

We are glad to be wandering more of God's wonders today!

We needed an excuse to catch our breath while climbing all 141 steps back out of the Mohegan Bluffs. So we took another picture of the beach that we had just left. 

We rode the 9.5-mile south end loop, and by this time we are where even the hardiest walkers will not tread. In fact, most of the bikers turned around after Mohegan Bluffs. Besides a few cars, we have this narrow little road to ourselves. While the first section of road was uphill, we'll call this section "undulating." We could usually use our momentum from coming down a hill to get us most of the way up the next hill. But Denisa is not too proud to admit to walking her bike up several of the bigger hills of Block Island.

Our next stop is a curious one--painted rock. This little stone looks bigger than it was originally, because it has hundreds of layers of paint over it. Locals and visitors have been painting it for decades to celebrate birthdays, vacations, graduations--any historical or imaginary event.

With Block Island's 17 miles of beaches, it's hard for first-time visitors to pick which ones to visit. We chose a stop to Dorry's beach largely because we needed a break from our bicycle seats about this time. We parked the bikes to make the half-mile hike down the gravel road, glad to see that there were wild berries to snack on along the way. 

When we topped the dune to the beach, we were the only ones there.

All the beaches on Block Island are free. After driving through the northeast, we recognize that is very unusual. Dorry's Beach is unmanicured, so it is full of drying sea weed--and its aroma.

While most of Block Island's sand is white, Dorry's beach has some sections of black sand. 

Denisa can't go to a beach without spelling something in the sand. There were no sea shells in sight, but the pretty beach pebbles could be used to spell out "Block."

It was a lovely place for a little Block Island beach time.

We had the beach to ourselves most of the time. Then a guy arrived to visit his mother. They scattered her ashes here when she died because she loved Block Island.

That was our last stop on our 9.5-mile loop, and we've done a pretty thorough job of exploring the south end of Block Island. This was all that we were planning to do, but we still had some time before the return ferry would be leaving the island. We might be crazy, but we decided to ride on to also conquer the bike ride to the furthest north point of the island. We stopped in at Dinghy Beach to eat the picnic lunch that we had packed for the day.

This is actually a great salt pond, that is filled with ocean water from a breach in the middle of the island. 

Now fueled with our calories from lunch, we are ready for the additional 8 miles. We are also glad to see that this northern stretch of road is flatter and a little wider.

We made it all the way to the farthest paved point of road on Block Island. Our incentive to go this far was a less-visited lighthouse on this tip of the island. What we didn't understand was that it was a very long walk to get there from that pavement.

Some of the walk was over a rocky beach. But we were entertained by our first wildlife of the day.

A nice group of seals were paddling around in the surf close to the beach.

We also saw shore birds, foraging for food in the surf.

We figure that a mile in the sand is equivalent to two miles on a flat surface. It was a tough walk to get closer to the North Light. Built in 1868, it served as a beacon in this dangerous section of the Atlantic.

Because we made that long walk, we're going to take more than just one picture to prove it.

We didn't have to worry about crowds at this stop, because few of the day-trippers will make it this far.

We found that these sand dunes contain a gull rookery. We saw lots of young gulls in the sand, most of them complaining that they were hungry.

We watched as the parents would fly in to their adolescent chicks. Adult gulls have a red dot on their bills, that the young ones know to peck with their beak to get fed.

We had to hurry a little on the walk back to our bikes, because this had turned into a longer-than-expected additional trip. But Denisa still took pictures of the little ruddy turnstones on the beach.

Their feathers are the same colors as the drying sea weed on the rocks.

We took one last picture of a seal, before we got back to our bikes. It was another 4-mile bike ride back to the ferry dock.

Our legs were tired, and we were certainly glad to see the dock. The ferry was already there, so we found a seat on board. Then we finished up all the snacks we had brought with us today. We had burned some calories with our 20.6 miles of biking and hiking on Block Island. By the end of the day, it felt like all of those miles were up-hill and in the sand. We were glad to sit and rest while the 5:15 ferry took us back to the mainland. Then we had to hurry home to start the generator to charge our motor home batteries before the 8 p.m. quiet time at Burlingame state park. We had a great day exploring Block Island--a very Rhode Island place to go!