When
we set out from Cape May, Block Island was just a name to us, the
first bit of New England to bump into, so we might as well stop
there, right? After a beautiful sunset and a good night's
sleep, we set out the next morning to explore. We tossed the bikes
into the dinghy and headed for the dock.
We saw dozens of cyclists as we rode out of the marina area and toward town, and and the streets rapidly became more crowded with bikes and cars and pedestrians as we neared the center of town. More people poured out of the huge ferry at the commercial dock, streaming toward the bicycle-rental places, restaurants, t-shirt shops, and galleries. And this on a Tuesday! Weekends must be completely nuts.
We bought a map at the visitors' center, had a quick lunch, then followed the main road toward the south end of the island. A long hill brought us to the Southeast Lighthouse, which was built in 1873 overlooking the dramatic Mohegan Bluffs. These are named for the Mohegan Indians, who attempted to invade the island long ago. The resident Manissean Indians drove them over the cliffs to their deaths; fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) they failed to do the same with the first white colonists, who arrived in 1661. A long wooden staircase leads down the soft, eroding cliff face to a rocky beach below. A few desperate vacationers were sunning themselves on the few tiny pockets of sand, but the major activity here seemed to be building cairns out of the plentiful supply of stones.
We continued along the paved road paralleling the bluffs, which curved around after another mile and headed into the interior of the island past numerous freshwater ponds, deep blue and speckled with lily pads. At Rodman's Hollow, we tried to hike one of the paths into the wildlife refuge, but didn't go far; it was overgrown with dense vegetation, half of it thorny and the other half poison ivy. But each time we paused, we heard lovely birdsong, and on the way back we discovered that the thorny plants were in fact blackberry bushes, and some had ripe berries. A berry snack made up for all the thorn scratches.
Further down the road we discovered the more maintained portion of Rodman's Hollow, and biked down a jeep road to a dramatic cliff overlook. We tried to make a loop out of it, but each spur we tried dead-ended, and we ended up going out the way we came. After a side trip out to a beach on the west side of the island, we closed our loop near the harbor at the historical cemetery. We wandered among the stones, reading the marvelously old-fashioned inscriptions. Some bore 18th century dates, and many of the names were those of the original settlers.
We wound up our Block Island tour with a return trip to downtown, where we devoured ice cream to restore all those calories we biked off, then bought a few groceries and returned to the boat. We hated to leave after only a short visit, but maybe we'll be back.
