The Vineyard

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On our way to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, we stopped at Mystic Seaport and Newport, Rhode Island. Mystic has an old ship, a museum, an aquarium, and a "village" of shops to wander through. We spent some time wandering around and evjoying teh local scenery, which was fun. Then we went on to Newport, where we did some more walking around, had a fantastic dinner (where Paul tried a crab claw!), and then spent the next morning checking out some of the masions built there.

The mansions were built at around the same time as the Biltmore (late 19th, early 20th century) as summer homes for the extremely wealthy. They were only lived in for about 6-8 weeks a year, by families with namkes like "Vanderbilt" and "Astor". A few of the mansions are gaudy and tacky, filled with luxury of every kind, while others are tasteful and "practical", while still being enormous. Also, another interesting fact is that while quite a few are owned by the Newport Historical Society, donated by their previous owners, a few are still loved in as summer homes by the wealthy still. Pretty cool, huh? We only had time to tour a couple of them, and it was raining too much to really explore the grounds, but we checked out The Breakers (built by the Biltmore Vanderbilt's older Vanderbilt brother)...which was large and grand and a bit overwhelming. Then we went to Rosecliff, which was much smaller, but actually has the largest ballroom of any of the Newport mansions. It's actually used almost every Thursday through Sunday night for weddings, parties, and sometimes weekly by film crews....it's been decorated to be several different places, even the white house, in movies. A movie that's out right now that has a scene filmed at Rosecliff is "Evening". This one was mostly white inside, with tasteful decor...not so much of the marble and large paintings and gilded/bronzed/platinum everything that was at The Breakers. It was our favorite of the two. Then we drove along the ocean and enjoyed the views before we headed to our Cape Cod campsite.

We camped in Mashpee and took the Island Queen ferry to Martha's Vineyard two days in a row. The first day we even brought Echo with us. He loved his first boat ride! He alternated between lying down politely (and sticking his nose through various rope hole sin teh side of the ferry) and putting his paws up on the railing so that he could see the oceana nd feel the wind. The wwe walked around Oak Bluffs, maybe about 5 or 6 miles, along the beaches and in the town. We had a picnic lunch with Echo, Danielle did a little shopping while Paul relaxed, and then we headed back to the campsite. The next day we left Echo at home so that we could see the whole Island (it's about 8 miles by 23 miles, so too much to walk!). We rented a scooter for the day (FUN!) and scooted all over the Island. We went to a couple of the lighthouses, through each of the towns, walked around Edgartown (where Paul had his first cup of New England Clam Chowder...and liked it!! It was fantastic chowder!), and scooted back to Oak Bluffs in time to take the ferry back to the campsite. It was an awesome couple of days, and we absolutely loved the Vineyard. It was far enough removed from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the coast but still felt exactly like New England. It was beautiful, peaceful, and fun!

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Comments

[Ellen]

Oh, wow . . . happy memories, happy memories . . . first went here 26 years ago . . . Sarah was five weeks old . . . hey, that didn't stop us from going whale watching! The captain asked how I could take such a little GIRL out on the ocean . . . errrr, he thought a little boy would have been safer??? :)