Rhode Island - Day 1

Oakleaf Family Campground, Chepachet

Monday, 1 October 2018

this morning's route

I stole the morning from Rhode Island and gave it to Massachusetts, because I wanted to visit the New Bedford Museum of Glass.  It’s a fascinating place

The museum is hard to find; the curator or whatever his title is told me New Bedford had been promising them for 7 years to put up some signs, and because they still haven’t done that the museum put up a few of their own.  Just little ones like on this building but those, and the online directions, got me there.

If you look closely at the front of the building, underneath the glass museum sign on the left is a small plaque that says that’s the height the water got to in the Hurricane of 1938.  That hurricane was a big deal in Rhode Island, and my momma still talked about it till she died.

The museum is in the back of an antiques store, and I found the antiques disconcerting because they had quite a few things from the 1950s, which I have trouble seeing as “antiques” since that’s during my lifetime.  But the glass display was worth the trouble.

early glass

These are examples of Roman and Eastern Mediterranean glass dating from about 600 BC to 300 AD.  Before the glass blow-pipe was invented in the Roman Empire around 50 BC, glass workers made hollow vessels by forming glass around a removable core, and that’s how these items were made.

I took this photo of the largest item because, if you blow it up you can see it’s got initials engraved on the left side and the Masonic emblem engraved on the opposite side.  The base is also unusual because the largest knob is hollow and has a “Frozen Charlotte” china doll inside it.   wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Charlotte  There has to be a story about this glass but the museum doesn’t know what it is.  It was made about 1880 by the Boston and Sandwich Glass Co. (made in Sandwich and sold in Boston).

Eventually glass workers figured out how to make glass items in molds, which allowed even relatively unskilled workers to turn out many many more items quickly.  This reduced the cost, which allowed middle class folks to be able to afford things.  This display on the right shows a glass and the mold it came from.

More items that came from a mold. Items like these were made up until (I think) the early 1960s.  My mom had several dishes like the 2^nd from the right, so I guess I know how they were made.

Yes, this chair is made of glass and, surprisingly, it can be used as a chair.  In fact, for a while very very rich people could buy a variety of furniture items, including a bed (which I have trouble imagining sleeping in).  Pretty neat, though, huh?

This is not a lamp, as I had imagined, but a table fountain.  And it still works (the museum tried it out when they bought it).  It’s got a dandy little mechanism that allows you to pour water into the bowl on top, then it flows down into the bottom bowl through channels in the side fittings; then the owner rotates the bowls which gives just enough water pressure so it flows up into the top basin and spouts up from the center, then flows down again into the bottom.  I think I’ve got that right.  Anyway, it’s ingenious.  There are only 8 known surviving examples of these.  Originally there were some made that provided a fountain large enough for the garden (the servants had to turn the bowls, of course).

An example of glass art.  Made fairly recently.  I really like it.  Something about it makes me feel happy.

this afternoon's route (the blue line is Rhode Island)

As we all know, Rhode Island ranks #50 in size among the states, so it doesn't take very long to get anywhere.  As you can see, I covered a fair chunk of the state, leaving New Bedford (MA) about 12:30, and still got to the campground by 3:30.  And though much of the drive was on I-95, quite a bit of it was on roads with a 40 or 45 mph speed limit (the county roads being pretty rural here), so I wasn't exactly making good time.  It's just a small state.  But a pretty one.  Lots of trees everywhere.

The reason I went so far out of the way was to go to the Visitor Center, which was down near the Connecticut border, to get a state map and travel information. 

To get to this campground, I went down 2 county roads, then turned on Pray Hill Rd., then on George Allen Rd., then on Old Snake Hill Rd. (to distinguish it from Snake Hill Rd.), and then on Oak Leaf Rd. to the campground.  I was skeptical about how possible it'd be to find these little roads, but they all turned out to be well-marked and, though ba-a-arely 2 lane, had a surprising amount of traffic.  Definitely rural in western RI.