Narragansett Bay Lighthouses

Yesterday we did a Lighthouse Cruise on Narragansett Bay, a large bay in Rhode Island that contains lots of islands, including the one we’re staying on.  We had to drive across 2 large bridges (island hopping, I guess) to get to the starting point, contained in photos below.

We left from Quonset, which contains an air base.  This is an old military plane that was flying around before we got on the boat.

This was in the parking lot.  I don’t imagine they could sell this thing without a new paint job!  Half the sides were covered too.

I didn’t include very many photos of the lighthouses we saw (10 of them in total), but here’s a little one next to one of the bridges we crossed.

We’re coming around the tip of an island.  This is Brenton Point where we were the day before.

It was pretty choppy out there in the open ocean.

This lighthouse was built into the rock.

So this is the estate where Jackie Kennedy used to spend summers (Hammersmith Farm).  I had it wrong in my previous post.  It wasn’t the Kennedy family, it was the Bouvier family.  But JFK and Jackie’s wedding reception was held here.  Looks different from the ocean side.

We went right into Newport Harbour and this is a little better shot of St. Mary’s Church where they were married.  That part was right.

This is where we had a beer under a gazebo...just down the pier.  We did get in pretty close with the catamaran.

I don’t think I’d like to go fishing in this thing.

And this is the big bridge we crossed - 2-1/4 miles long.

We’re going under it here.

All in all, it was a very nice 1-3/4 hour cruise.  A local historian was doing the talking about the area through the whole thing.  The name Rhode Island was picked because when an explorer in the 1500s first came around one of the islands, it reminded him of the island of Rhodes in Greece, and the name stuck.  That’s it in a nutshell.

Today we’re heading for parts north.