With Friends - Prudence Island

Coffee!!

We started early today as we had to catch the 9:45 ferry in Bristol to go Prudence Island. Prudence Island sits right in the middle of Narragansett Bay. We parked at the ferry dock in Bristol at about 8:15, which should have given us plenty of time to catch some breakfast and make the ferry, leisurely. Things just didn't workout that way. We had found a 'breakfast place' which turned out to be just muffins and coffee.. thanks Siri! And walked along Hope Street in hopes of finding a place that serves a full breakfast menu and sure enough we found just the place. The Sunset Cafe, since 1926. The Sunday morning crowd had begun to gather and the place was hopping. We got seated right away and were served coffee in great huge mugs. The good service seems to have ended there. The picture on the left of Nana and her coffee was taken at 8:33 according to my iPhone...we got served at 9:10 and still needed to make it to  the terminal and get tickets. I don't do well in situations like this as I am compulsorily punctual, and I was really getting on edge as the time to catch the boat seemed to be rushing at us, the short version is that we ate fast, and made the ferry just fine, but not without me

Approaching Prudence

suffering some unfounded anxiety. It was a beautiful bright sunny morning with a very strong wind out of the Northwest, the bay was full of white caps and Nana and I stayed inside for the short ride over to the island. Our friends met us at he ferry landing on Prudence and drove us to their house where we had even more coffee and even better conversation. Once we had our fill and caught up on all of the happenings we set out for a hike. We ended up on Broadway just East of the schoolhouse on a well maintained trail, the Heritage Trail,  and began our walk. For the next hour we chatted about all sorts of pressing issues like 'What kind of bug is that?', you know, the real important stuff.  We made it to the site of an old farm, Baker Farm, where a Frisbee Golf course had been set up and many Frisbees were left there for old walkers like us, so we all tried our hands at pitching Frisbees.

Pitchin' Frisbees

It was proven that we had all pursued the right career paths as Frisbee Golf proved a bit too difficult for our talents. The site where the 'golf course' was set up was the site of an old farm and many of the foundations were still standing. Even though this farm has been long abandoned the layout was still quite obvious. we all took turns guessing what part was what...and we came up with logical answers, but we really don't know if we were even close. I was a beautiful spot.

Examining the foundations

As I mentioned earlier it was a very windy day, however the forest around us kept the wind away from us and coming to this clearing which was open to the sky we started to cool off rapidly. Even thought it is the middle of May it was a cool day on the trail if you got out from the protection of the trees. An interesting thing, maybe a tradition on the island, was the setting of old rusted pots on the top of the stone walls that criss-cross the island. I think we saw at least a half a dozen old enameled cooking pots that had their bottoms rusted out, perched on the tops of stone walls. There were several at the farm, which isn't too surprising I guess but further along the trail we saw several others.

Pots on Walls

We walked to the Division Wall where we decided to turn back, making the Division wall our halfway point. Our good conversations continued and we all had a good time in each others company.
Through a series of events recently the value of good friends has come sharply into focus. Shared times like these bring home that fact the these friendships are our most valued possessions and that these times and shared ideas and what put meaning into all that we do. So thanks to all our friends that put meaning into our lives and thanks to the people who stack pots on stone walls to make us confused.

We walked a total of two and a half miles, not far in miles but a great day in the woods. Back at the house w fantastic lunch was set out and more stories were tole, problems solved and plans made. The 5:35 ferry arrived promptly at 6:00 ...well it's island time ... and our little group continued the fun with dinner in a local restaurant before heading home. A truly great, memorable Sunday. We should all have more of these.   Some more pictures below.

Friends

You can't get too lost here.

The ride back

Our Walk, about 2.5 miles