Driving in New England

Now our next adventure is a late spring/early summer driving trip exploring a number of NE states we haven’t visited before, then heading up into the Maritime Provinces of Canada. The first new state for us was New Jersey. I had read that Cape May, on the southern tip, was a popular summer destination filled with Victorian mansions…

… and hotels just off the beach -

The weather wasn’t very cooperative for a beach walk -

We headed north and east to Connecticut…

… where we found a nice hike along a river…

… that had a waterfall feeding it -

We then moved on to Narragansett, RI and spent a couple of nights in a cottage with the largest azalea bushes I’d ever seen!

We stayed here because it was near to Newport, RI where the “summer cottages” of the Vanderbilts and the like were built (around 1900)…

… and we wanted to tour the houses, as well as walk on the Cliff Trail behind them -

I was fascinated with the gorgeous color striations in the rocks -

After Rhode Island, we moved on to Massachusetts because I always thought Cape Cod looked cool, flexing its bicep into the Atlantic. :)

We did a quick marsh walk…

… and traversed a boardwalk through an Atlantic White Cedar swamp…

… before enjoying a lobster roll in a park -

As we started driving along the coast of Maine, we stopped in to see the trolls of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens -

These were designed and constructed by the Danish artist, Thomas Dambo…

… using recycled wood…

… and scattered through the 300 acres of the park -

I had to throw this last one in with a human for scale -

The Fiddlehead Ferns were starting to unfurl -

I will leave you with a quintessential New England landscape -