Reposted from the Great Freedom Adventures Catalog:
The Best Bike Tour, Attractions and Activities on Block Island, RI
One of the “Last Great Places” Vacation with us on Rhode Island’s Block Island and you will be completely enthralled with this island. Block Island may be America’s best kept secret and in fact, we should probably include a disclaimer: though you may leave after four days, your heart is almost certain to remain. The Nature Conservancy has named Block Island one of the original “Last Great Places” in the Western Hemisphere and you will soon see why. Over 43% of this pristine natural environment is protected; there are over 30 miles of gorgeous trails, 17 miles of beaches, and myriad wildlife on this Atlantic Flyway stopover.
The same great, mile-high glacier that parked ten to twenty miles off of southern New England and heaped up Nantucket and the Vineyard for Massachusetts, and the Forks of Long Island for New York, also left behind an appropriately diminutive summer playground for little Rhode Island.
Strenuous, 18 miles a day, but could be broken in to smaller segments.
Highlights
Sun, Sand, Spa, Food, Drink, Life
After reading an article in Westways magazine about two women who had walked from Hermosa Beach to Topanga Canyon, my cousin & I decided WE could do this. Each year we try and do a trip together and for some reason we seem to make them a challenge. Could it be because we are both competitive? So we started to plan our trip and thought why not start in Laguna where I live and go to Santa Monica where we could enjoy a spa day at the end of our trip.
After we left Orcas Island last Labor Day, we heard that teenager Colton Harris-Moore was hiding all over the island, breaking into businesses, leaving the barefoot mark that gained him the “Barefoot Bandit” moniker, and learning to fly other people’s airplanes. Now he’s in federal prison, having been finally caught in the Bahamas. I think he should have stayed here and figured a way to blend in with island life on this beautiful San Juan archipelago in Washington state. But that’s another man’s journey, another’s Weekend Walk. Much of the essence of the Pacific Northwest, for me, is here among these islands in Puget Sound, and I am looking forward to our annual trip to Orcas Island this Labor Day weekend.
