Massachusetts & Rhode Island May 2023

I have got some plans to spend the rest of the Month of May in Massachusetts, on the southern side of the state below Boston. In being there for about two weeks, I’ll have a lot of time to check the place out and so far am planning on going to (Plain Ridge Park Casino, Wrentham VIllage Premium Outlets, Normandy Farms, “An Unlikely Story”, Boston University, possibly even Harriman New York for the holiday at the end of the month if I have time).

I’ll be staying at Residence Inn Providence Lincoln, 632 George Washington Hwy, Lincoln, RI 02865. This is a two week trip and I’m planning on getting out of there just after memorial day. While I’m there, I’ve got a lot to check out. I used to live in Lowell, MA and Nashua, NH too and I have not gone back to either of them since 2014. They are a little bit of a stretch for me to go that far north from where I’m going to be at so I don’t know if I’ll be going to those locations, but if I do go there it would be to check out Lowell’s Suppa’s pizza joint if it still exists. So as a reference – check out the luggage! That’s about 200lbs of luggage.

So I got in on Wednesday, mid-afternoonish. Just in perfect time for Boston’s rush hour. For some reason I ended up flying into Boston at this time to make my way over two hours south to Rhode Island where I was staying. It’s been a while since I was in Boston, and really the only thing that I recalled a little bit was passing through the street the stadium is on. GPS really does not help here, I’m sure I spent too much time looking at that to recall much else from ten years ago. So I stayed at the Residence Inn in Lincoln or something. As I’m checking in, I asked for some extra hangars that never did arrive. So while waiting for these things I drove around a little bit. Just to the store and back really. I was pretty tired because I’d started the day at 3:30 am and got to the room at 6 pm but I didn’t want to end it that fast. So I just went to the shops across the road, I stopped at Stop and Shop. Been a while since I was in one of those either, my home town back in Monroe had one of them when I was growing up. On the way back I drove by the Planet Fitness to see where it was located one exit up on the highway. Then I came back to the hotel and went to the gym there. The equipment at the hotel is pretty nice Precor stuff, all quite new. Actually the whole hotel seems pretty new.

On the way in, I decided to pull up the GPS to see how close Boston University was. I was actually passing by it with it on my right as I was going down the highway. I am still considering going there, and have quite convinced myself at this point that I’d like to go there. Seems like the right thing to do. The place I was staying at was alright too, check it out.

So on Thursday here, I checked out a place called 110 Grill and the Planet Fitness nearby Lincoln that I drove by the night before. 110 Grill was a nice spot, they were pretty thoughtful there. I got salmon for dinner here, about anywhere I went this close to the coast I got seafood – even if it didn’t have much of a chance of coming locally. I also got some clam chowder here it was very good and I would get it again. After that I went to the gym nearby the hotel, it seemed very new along with the rest of the buildings in that parking lot. I spent an hour there just doing aerobics and then went back to the hotel.

Friday I checked out the pizza place in Plainville and the Met in Pawtucket. The pizza place was in Plainville, MA. It was called South Street Pizza. I think this place is a great lunch spot (So much I went back). The choices are many, most of all, there are those, here. I got an italian sandwich and it was pretty good, I also got a baklava dessert and it had about a hundred layers and I had to ask the lady there if they were making it there, but she had told me no but they were coming from a local place I didn’t catch the name of. After that, I went to the Met to check out a rock concert with Gary Hoey. Gary plays the guitar and there’s a band that plays some music with Gary. Every once in a while Gary continuously introduces, and then seemingly reintroduces the same keyboard, drummer and whoever else was playing alongside Gary that night. Gary plays a lot like a Joe Satriani, only without the Satriani, so Gary plays like a Joe. Anyways, the place could clearly hold about 400 or more people, and there were about 40 people there on this evening. The music was loud and I had worn earplugs, the venue has clearly had louder. So I walk in and the bartender asks me where I was from, after hearing the accent in my voice. I mention a few of the places I’ve lived in, in an attempt to resolve the fellas confusion as to my inexcusable accent. He then asked what I did, and I told him a little bit of what I did. I got my local beer, something or whatever from the draft, for 8 dollars. I handed him a ten and told him to keep it and then walked off and stood around for a few moments until the show went on. After a while I decided I was hungry so I left the show after a set.

Saturday I checked out Boston, Quincy Hall, Boston Harbor, the park there, the beach there, it was raining so the boston trip got cut short, chipotle and river falls in the evening. It was a pretty busy day. So I got into Boston in the morning, and this time the GPS was a lot more correct than it had been the other day. On getting into Boston I had some vague flashbacks from 2014 and I could barely remember much of going in and around the city at all, so fortunately the place didn’t leave any lasting damage, I guess. Anyways, I spotted a park as I was driving in and I needed to figure on where to go anyways so I parallel parked and walked through the park, toward a beach. There were some fellas playing basketball on the completely uneven courts as I strolled through, and then before the beach there was a small running track and field and stadium dedicated to a one Paul J. Saunders.

I continued on through the park, and crossed the road to find myself at Carson Beach. Of note on this reasonably windy, chilly and somewhat cold day was that there were two women just chilling and doing tiktoks on the beach, one was wearing a red bikini, this was the one on camera, apparently. They seemed to be having a fine enough time, being about the only two people in sight on the beach. The beach itself was nice, surrounding Old Harbor. It was otherwise quiet, which I assume was due to the poor weather. The rain turned into a mist at this point and I headed back to the car to make my way downtown.

Arguably, the 38 dollar view from Boston Harbor Parking garage was both the best view available on this day, as well as for the best price, at least to me. So I got downtown and decided not to park on the street due to the rain, so I made my way up to the jellyfish level of the Parking Garage. For reference I believe this to be the fifth floor. There were two more floors, one being lobster or something else. Parking was quite easy and getting down there was an elevator so I can quite certainly say that aside from the view, the parking garage itself was nice enough. Check out the views from it!

So I took the elevator down, and started heading towards Faneuil Hall, this being the destination I had in mind to check out. So I get down there and pass by what some engraving claimed to be a fountain and then decided to backtrack a little bit to go to the bathroom. It’s not so hard at all to find these, here. So I go inside of the hotel there and inside there is a coffee bar thing and then there’s a sign indicated that the bathrooms were outside. The buildings got two main entrances into this hall spot, so I figured it was indicating that the bathroom was on the other side, because I didn’t see one coming in.

After getting out of the entrance to the hotel I began heading towards the marketpalce again. I wanted to check it out, just to see what it was like. For the most part it’s still a marketplace, some of the stuff probably still comes in on boat, even. There’s three main halls now and then one they dedicated as a food court. So I got there and walked around for a few moments but I was hungry so I wanted to stop at Quincy Market building. It was gigantic.

So I went inside and there seemed to be a lot more people inside, than there were outside, it being a rainy morning and all. So I got almost halfway through and found myself sold on some lobster sandwich place. There were people dragging their meals all throughout the place, looking for a spot to sit though. Another meal in particular that seemed to be popular was a loaf of bread which had the center hollowed out and in place of the bread center it was filled with clam chowder. This seemed like a pretty heavy meal to me, for a lunch, and so I found myself ordering a lobster grilled cheese sandwich and a drink for about 34 dollars from this place.

The sandwich was delicious. It had about as much lobster on it as you’d expect from a lobster roll, only instead of a roll it came on two slices of white bread and filled with a bunch of ‘Merican cheese. Overall very easy to eat, and yes it was a little heavy for a brunch but I’d not had anything for breakfast so this was worth it to me. Anyways after the sandwich, I walked out about halfway through, near a dinosaur exhibit. After getting a photo of it, I was approached by a 350 lb white male about my age that was wearing a red hoodie and wearing some car keys around his neck. He asked me if he could have some food. I informed him that he sure could, the food court was right next to us and there was a lot of food inside. His facial expression dropped at this point, as he realized that he might have gotten a bit more than he had asked for. So he mentioned that that was not what he meant. I knew damn well what he wanted, but he didn’t ask for that – he had asked for food. I asked him if I looked like a fucking banana tree and then went on a full two minute rant about how he could just easily walk in the food hall and ask people for any of the food that they were not going to eat that they left on the table and even then if he continued to be denied that he could just grab it when they left, or just snatch the fresh food from the trash as any reasonably hungry person would do (This, I do know, yes?). Anyways, the guy certainly could have missed a few hundred meals and certainly was not in any shape to actually need a meal, and so had he asked me for the ten dollars he actuallly had wanted, I might’ve actually given it to him. So anyways, after my rant, he actually says, “Thank you”, and I say, “You’re welcome”, and walk off to the Samsonite store asking other folks if I looked like a fucking banana tree along the way. Tell ya one thing – nobody asked me for more food on this day. Check out the dinosaur.

On my way into the Samsonite store, a lady walks in in front of me and decides to toss her umbrella on the ground outside the store before walking inside. She immediately realized this was a mistake as she was quickly instructed by the store staff that she was welcome to bring her wet umbrella inside the store with her. So, not wanting to back out, I grabbed the soaking wet thing off the ground and handed to to her by the stem and then proceeded to ask the folks there if they had the bag I was looking for. They didn’t have it. So I left there, sat near the entrance to the place for a few moments while being grilled by a fella sitting off in the distance (I assume he heard my rant – one of those inner city denizens, for sure), then decided to walk out of there because the rain was picking up. I had wanted to do a few other things in Boston during the day, but I didn’t want to get soaked. So I went back to Lincoln, RI, walking past the same fountain as on the way in.

I stopped at some of the harbor docks near the same hotel as on the way in, on the way out. There was a sea pidgeon there, eyeing me a bit. Seemed alright though. Not much was going on and the rain was building up a bit, so I stood under an umbrella and watched it for a few minutes.

Anyways, I drove back to the hotel after Boston and then went to the gym there for about an hour. I found out that my watch had been connnecting to the workout equipment as I was using it and apparently it was doing some kind of conversion into steps and sending this to the watch every time I was working out. So on this day it told me around 19k steps or so. Anyways, after all that I went back out to go get some dinner at a place called River Falls. It was an alright spot in the middle of a square that reeked like cannabis and there were at least 6 other restaurants surrounding the circle. Inside the place, the waitress was quite tolerant of bullshit and relentless passes, ultimately having to inform me that she was dating outside of the restaurant, which she was told that we never had to leave the restaurant, and so on and such. Anyways, it was kind of empty there, but the food was alright, I got some fish and chips, but instead of chips it was just french fries. Nice quiet little spot.

Sunday I went to Cape Cod, canal, Sandwich Beach, Fishermans View, canal, gym, spicy stores. Cape cod I went fishing in the canal, walked along the beach, went to a gym. I also tried to find some ceylon cinnamon, at about 3 different stores. The only place that had it was Whole Foods. I go with ceylon because when i put 2 tablespoons of any other cinnamon in my oats I bleed like a motherfucker when cut, and I’m not one to settle for less cinnamon in my oats. The trick is to balance it with actual maple syrup. That corn syrup poison just won’t do – they tried to pull that shit on me at the hotel buffet breakfast.

I went to the canal twice – once to figure out where to go on the way in and another time on the way out to do some fishing. I had some extra bait from lunch I’d saved up and for reference, covering raw salmon in lobster guts didn’t work for me. It might’ve, if my pole was about two feet longer. I couldn’t get far enough into the canal with the smaller 8 foot rod I’d brought – the things more meant for lakes and rivers, not sea canals. It was nice, either way, the fishing.

Monday I went to do some laundry here in the hotel, Lime Rock Rreserve trail, then went to the gym here, also the poke place (Poke Bros or something?). For dinner I had some Chipotle that I’d managed to bake the hate out of with my slow cooker. If you don’t take a slow cooker or frozen meals with you when going on vacation – have fun waiting for food – I spend less time having better meals, personally. The trail itself was pretty nice. It was really two trails – one offereing a view of a manmade pond and the other being a bit mroe rocky and hilly. I took the one with the pond view. This was good for this day as my legs had quite a few pulled muscles from scissor kicks I’d done the day before last. Anyways, the views were great. On my way to somewhere in the morning I happened upon a painted turtle that had decided to cross the road at an inopportune time, and fortunately the road was queit enough for me to hop out and move it out the road. I tried to snap a better photo but while I was doing this my laptop bag slid around from my back and hit my elbow, launching the turtle about 3 feet away only to bounce off a log, land upright and finish the scurrying off it was already doing!

I also learned on this day that there is a different syle of poke all over the place, apparently the style I had on this day was a Hawaiian style. I don’t recall seeing other styles, ever, but anyways, it was good, with some spicy salmon, avocado, soy beans, brown rice, wasabi mayo and fish eggs topped with cashew ground up. This was for lunch. For dinner – I’d been slow cooking a meal I’d gotten from chipotle a few days before. I didn’t feel like tossing it is all. I had happened to show up right before the dinner rush apparently, and by the time I’d gotten a meal there were about 15 other people in line waiting for food. Just 3 people there to prepare food, though. I’d originally wanted to leave because they just didn’t have the staff present to serve the food, but I was talked out of this. By the time I ordered I suppose the girl had heard me rambling for a moment and so anyways she seemed pretty mad, visibly so at this point, so I mentioned at this point that that’s usually why I don’t queue to get fast food – because when we all stand in line like this, the folks get pretty frustrated, and anwyays I could practically feel the hate pouring into the food as the girl kept apologizing for no apparent reason, I was quite content, waiting, that is. It tasted about as I’d expected it to taste, but I only got through about a quarter of it before I’d decided I was full. I slow cooked it for about two days and it was very good after that. Aside from the brown rice, which seemed to have been partially pilferred .. the hull was thinner than I recall thinking brown rice should’ve been.

Tuesday I went to Seekonk river north of Providence, Swan Point Graveyard, Blackstone Park, Good Burger scene shoot, the restaurant and planet fitness. So I drove up and down Blackstone Boulevard – very pretty views on this but I was driving and only got one good photo. There happened to be a movie scene being filmed on the road as I was passing through. I didn’t realize at first, i only saw a funky looking car and managed to snap a photo of it as I blew by at ten miles an hour or so. Check it out!

So anyways, I’d first navigated just to “Seekonk River” and Google thought that I was looking to park in the back of a retirement community. The staff eyed me as I parked there and looked for a better spot, only to find myself parking right alongside Seekonk (not SeeCock!) River, I walked along it for a bit before I found an entrance into Blackstone Park near what was identified as “Hockey Pond” and so I walked around the pond and then back to the car.

So I got back to the car and then drove down Blackstone Boulevard, looking for a better view of the river, only to find myself driving through Swan Point Cemetery. Here I found H.P. Lovecraft’s grave (According to Google!), and a lucky turkey with her dedicated flock of males in pursuit.

Wednesday I went to Patriot Park & Gillette Stadium & the nature trail & cranberry bog back there, and the Planet Fitness in North Attleborough MA, then went back to the hotel to do some laundry.

After the gym, I went back to the hotel and went to sleep for the night. Thursday I went to Scialo Bros. Bakery, Telford Park, Whiting Pond, I took it easy because my knee was aching and i needed to pack for an early flight the next day. I had put the treadmill at a 6.5% grade and about 3.2 miles per hour, and usually I keep it under 3 miles an hour because my right knee will ache the next day due to injuries I’ve had since most of my life that I can remember. The bakery is located in Federal Hill, which felt to me like a Newburgh, NY downtown, but a lot nicer and also right next to the ocean. It’s got some of the best baked goods your money can still buy. Telford Park seemed more like a place to bring kids so I just stopped there briefly enough to plug in Whiting Pond. Whiting Pond boat launch is more of a quiet little fishing spot, but was perfect to end the trip on and eat the cookies I’d gotten from the bakery.

Friday I traveled back, 12 hours of travel time. I left at 530 in the morning EST and got back in my place at 430 CST. The flights were nice. The second one was a little bumpy but for the most part I slept through them. I went to a place to eat on the layover in Georgia for a turkey wrap and they had decided that it was a good idea to put Pesto and some soft cheese in there. It was a very strange wrap, from a texture standpoint. Even the french fries were oddly cut – not straight, more like really thick half-potato chip shaped. Worth the meal for that experience, but overall the taste was not there. Possibly they could do with some better mayo or ketchup, or just better quality ingredients overall. I took an uber back from the airport and it was about 4 times more costly than usual, I guess this is the price of rush hour traffic. It took maybe an extra minute to get back though, so whatever. So from the start to the finish of this trip, there’s about another 23,000 words plus some 200+ more photos and even more words that I didn’t put on this site – this was just what I felt like putting on here to send the reminder that anything here’s very much a movie based on a book, in that this is only about 16 percent of my summary of the trip that I bothered to put here.