Rhode Island - Day 3 - North Smithfield

Oakleaf Family Campground
Wednesday, 3 October 2018

That storm kept on most of the night and the thunder scared Gracie to death.  And I have to say I wasn't 100% calm.  I could tell the lightning was getting closer and closer, and then I got pretty nervous when it was less than a mile away.  This is a metal box, after all.  It took a while before any of us got to sleep.

today's route

These rural roads may or may not be labeled, I discovered.  I guess I started feeling secure after all the roads on Monday were clearly labeled, and I set off following online instructions.  After all, Snake Hill Road is even on the state map so how hard could it be to find?

Well, Snake Hill Rd. encounters several other roads along the way and the one where it made an unlabeled sharp right turn, instead of going straight (on another unlabeled road) or left (on a labeled road) threw me completely.  And after I'd wrongly decided it must be the straight-ahead unlabeled road, that road took a sharp turn to the left when another road shot off straight ahead.  So I took the sharp left and after a mile or so was sure I was in the wrong place.  I managed to flag down a passing motorist who told me to go back and go the other way, but (sadly) I forgot part of his instructions so only went back to the previous wrong turn.  And after a while stopped a pedestrian and actually listened to his instructions and went back to the previous wrong turn and then back to the first wrong turn and finally got it right.

Even looking carefully I was unable to find a sign, nowhere on the map does it show a sharp right turn, and nowhere in the online instructions did they mention a sharp right turn.  However, I'm now able to confirm this part of Rhode Island is very rural, and Rhode Islanders are very nice about being asked for directions.

Towns in Rhode Island are tricky.  The official state map (see photo above) shows them as big chunks of the state - the yellow lines in that map above mark off city lines.  So the town of North Smithfield is the whole area above the "BLACKSTONE" where the muddle of blue lines is focused.  Not exactly easy to locate when I'm trying to find a town.  On the AAA map, North Smithfield is shown as a dot that's labeled North Smithfield.  Unfortunately, that dot is elusive in real life.

A lot of the roads aren't known to residents by their State Route numbers but instead by names.  Rt. 102 is best known as the Victory Highway.  Although roads labeled Victory Highway will also run off on a tangent from the real one, apparently in an attempt to confuse wandering tourists, and the Victory Highway may also be known as Chopmist Hill Rd, Plainfield Pike, Money Hill Rd. or Broncos Highway, depending on where you are.

I think the key to getting around in this state is to keep an open mind, a sense of humor, and a serious willingness to flag down unsuspecting motorists to plead for directions.

I was hoping to find 2 places: Slatersville and Wright's Dairy Farm & Bakery.  Kept missing the first but happily found the second.

I'll try again on Slatersville because it was the first planned industrial village in America.  It was obviously well-planned and well-cared for, because more than 200 years later it's still a vibrant community.  As I understand it.  I haven't quite found it yet.  I kept finding other places that were where I thought Slatersville was.

Maybe 2 miles down the road from where Slatersville wasn't (at least, it would have been 2 miles if I hadn't turned on the wrong road and then had to find a place to turn around in), is Wright's Dairy Farm & Bakery.  When I was still in Falmouth, the only TV station I could pick up was NBC in Providence, and one morning I saw a commercial for this place.  They said visitors could go to the bakery for a wonderful pastry and then stroll over to see the cows being milked.  Sounded like my kind of place.  I mentioned it to the campground owner here and she said the bakery is famous in these parts.  I can now attest that there's a good reason for that.

milking shed

The bakery started years ago when Mrs. Wright baked up a few little items with some leftover milk and cream she had.  Her baking got popular and she moved it into the garage where they'd fixed up a bigger kitchen for her.  Now it's a very popular business.  In the hour I was there, it looked like half the town stopped by plus quite a few with out-of-state license plates (including mine).  Huge selection. https://wrightsdairyfarm.com/bakery.html

I was there around lunchtime so missed the milking.  It happens at 4:30 AM (no visitors then, of course) and around 3:00-5:00 PM.

I did see quite a few cows in a shed nearby.  They were all pregnant and were kept separate from the milking herd until they were near calving time, when they're taken to the calving shed not far away.

In between the two was another shed with more cows but they kept us away from them and I didn't see any staff near enough to ask questions.

It's all very clean and pleasant - except when I was walking the dogs I found the manure pile.  According to a sign, they used to give away the manure but now charge a nominal fee - I think it was $10 a truckload, but you have to load your own.

A family business.  Pleasant employees.  Probably contented cows.  Their milk is really good.  I'm sure I'll stop back by for more milk and pastries before I leave the state.

I passed the turn for Snake Hill Road on the way back to the campground but had had enough of that road for one day so kept to numbered roads.  Maybe next time.

As you can see, some of the leaves are changing, but by no means all of them.  My campground is still almost all green, and you can see the trees in the background are all green.  But it's getting to be that time of year.