My Trip To Visit the Orlov Family
and
The Ocean State of Rhode Island

Hi there!

I went to Rhode Island the first week of October to visit Irina, Nikita, and Sergei Orlov, our Russian friends, and enjoy with them some Indian summer weather complemented by initial brilliant colors of the famous New England fall foliage. I flew coach up nonstop Tuesday from about nine twenty-five until eleven a.m. 

It was wonderful to see Irina and be treated to curbside pickup. She drove us to Newport where we spent a marvelous afternoon snacking along the famous Cliff Walk, from the Forty Steps at Narragansett Ave. north to Newport Beach. We entered the resort from the west via magnificent bridges and left on 114 North, cutting across a wee corner of Massachusetts on the way home. After a wonderful supper we retired about nine at night.

Nikita gets up about five in the morning for his long commute to work, Irina then goes for a run. After she fixes Sergei breakfast while he practices his trumpet, it’s off to school for him. She and I headed south to Galilee to take the Point Judith Ferry to Block Island.

Why Block Island? Formed by glaciers nearly 10,000 years ago, this seven mile long, three and a half mile wide micro-climate with an area of 11 square miles hosts a unique and precious community of flora and fauna—some flourishing, some rare—The Nature Conservancy calls one of the 12 last great places in the Western Hemisphere. Originally settled by the Manisses Indians, it was named after Dutch navigator Adrian Block, who stumbled across it in 1614, then occupied by a party of English from the mainland in 1661. The 6400-acre island population (1990), 836.

We took an hour ferry ride across twelve miles of Rhode Island Sound and into the Atlantic Ocean, leaving at 11 a.m. and docking at New Shoreham, the smallest town in the smallest state in America. Its boundaries are the same as those of the island. By the time we got off the ferry at quarter past noon, we had about two hours and forty-five minutes to enjoy the island. We walked up the Ocean View trail along barrier beaches bordered by a maritime scrubland ecosystem including green late summer shades of morianal grasslands, bayberry, and dense shrub thickets with contrasting bright autumn splashes of red from sumac and Virginia creeper not yet lashed by the savage winter storms on to Spring Street. From there we went uphill another two miles to Southeast Lighthouse, built 1875 and once New England’s most powerful light, closed today because it wasn’t a Saturday or Sunday, their open hours Labor Day to Columbus Day. We ate a nice picnic lunch at Mohegan Bluffs on the Mohegan Trail.

The coastal bluffs rise abruptly to a height of about 200 feet above the sea and stretch nearly three miles along the southern shore. The long stairs down to the rocky, restless water’s edge were out of order and off limits. We basked above in the warm weather, munching and chatting away an hour or so while we enjoyed the spectacular scenery of the pocket beaches caught below between pounding surf and steep bluff, read the geologic description of the conglomeration of rocks and soil stripped by a glacier with a panoramic display which helped us identify hazy Long Island out in the distance, then headed post-haste over the hilly terrain along stone walls overlooking salt and brackish ponds linking various freshwater ecosystems on our way back to the 3:00 p.m. ferry so we could take Sergei to his team practice. We arrived with mere minutes to spare, during which time we would have done well to remember to have retrieved our beach bag with our towels, swim suits, my sweatshirt, and Irina’s jacket in the locker on shore. Thanks to the kindness of the Block Island Ferry and the Tourism Council personnel we retrieved our bag two hours later from the incoming ferry arriving at six p.m., utilizing the time in between to walk a nearby state beach shoreline. We found empty horseshoe crab shells there and each selected a keepsake.

The next morning dawned chilly, wet and windy. On the way to Newport we stopped by to see the Museum of Anthropology and strolled to the cliff. We toured The Breakers, built 1893-1895. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, President and Chairman of the New York Central Railroad, commissioned leading American architect Richard Morris Hunt to design this 70-room Italian Renaissance-style house, the grandest of the Newport summer cottages and a National Historic Landmark, and Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park, to lay out formal gardens and landscape the grounds of the 13-acre estate overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. We ate our picnic lunch there on a bench under a Norway maple. We then walked south along Cliff Walk until the blustery rain and approaching end of our allotted time hastened our steps back to the car.

At home we ate a nice quick supper and took Sergei to swim practice. In the gathering dusk Irina and I power-walked one and a half miles out and then back again along the Blackstone River State Park paved bike path, and at nightfall found glowworms beaming jeweled spots of light at the grassy edge of the black asphalt. We sat in on the last half hour of Sergei’s swim team practice and enjoyed watching him excel effortlessly in the water. The evening before Sergei had serenaded us at home with a trumpet concert while Nikita grilled marinated pork to perfection; Sergei also plays on his school football team.

I have no vistas of lavender and white rambling roses, roadside little pink flowers, or Concord grapes, but enjoy from our backyard some of the same colors from goldenrod and chicory, though our maples are not yet crimson. I had a most lovely visit with Irina, Nikita, and Sergei, and we look forward to the next time all of us can get together. Why, we haven’t seen the 25 miles of walking trails open to the public free of charge on Block Island traversing some of the most spectacular scenery on the eastern seaboard, 4 more Newport mansions we upgraded our tickets to include after we toured The Breakers, not to mention an abundant variety of parks, beaches, points of interest, museums, and more we would like to visit.