Strolling & Trolling in North Kingstown, Rhode Island

For the third summer in row, I took a daytrip to Rhode Island to see my friend Christopher Kain. 

Two years ago, our focus was Providence with stops at the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) Museum, the Providence Athenaeum and Brown University before taking in the WaterFire along the Providence River. It was a fabulous time until I fell, bloodied my knee and ripped my pants and then discovering the Commuter Rail back to Boston was inoperable due to a felled tree on the tracks in Canton. Last year, we ventured to Newport highlighted by a visit to the Castle Island Lighthouse and dinner at the Valley Inn Restaurant in Portsmouth.

This year, we made our way to North Kingstown which is just under 25 miles south of Providence. Our first destination was an art installation of a troll by Thomas Dambo in Ryan Park. These trolls are wooden sculptures made mainly of recycled materials. This troll you see below is called the Iver Mudslider and is Troll 161 out of an estimated 170 which are situated all over the world. After we concluded our visit, several people asked us if we had been trolling. Indeed, we had.

From there, we made our way to Wickford which is a village within North Kingstown which has a large number of 18th Century colonial homes. It is Christopher's favorite spot in all of Rhode Island. Before we explored the area, we had lunch at Tavern by the Sea where I enjoyed salmon, veggies and rice pilaf without any dressing or sauce and it was quite refreshing. Equally refreshing was the level of service provided by our waitress, Leah. 

After our meal, Christopher showed me several antiques store before we made our way onto Main Street to look at these houses. Christopher then led me to the Old Narragansett Church which is believed to be the oldest Episcopalian house of worship in New England. We met with the church caretakers who showed us the pipe organ built in 1680 which has been with the church since 1800.

As you can imagine, this church was not air conditioned. So, we went back out in the 90-degree weather to cool off and made our way down to the ocean. After all, we were in the Ocean State.

We concluded the afternoon with a visit to the Village Ice Cream & Soup shop. I was hoping there would be gazpacho on this hot day. But I settled for a scoop of vegan cookies 'n cream ice cream before heading back to Providence where Christopher dropped me off at the train station.

Honestly, it doesn't seem like we did all that much, but what I described to you took place over a period of 6 hours. This was truly a day trip.

So, what will my next Rhode Island adventure be? I would like to go duckpin bowling. It is something I have not done since I was in Atlanta. Or perhaps we can pick some tulips next spring. Who knows? Maybe we venture to Westerly and bump into Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

In such a small place the possibilities are endless.