Day 725: Roger Williams NM and New Bedford Whaling NHP

We had a nice Shabbos at Brothers of Joseph in Norwich, Connecticut. The community has shrunk considerably in the last few decades, but those that still call Norwich home have tenaciously kept the congregation going. Thanks for hosting us!

Today we drove north and east to Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of Rhode Island. The capitol building greeted us as we drove into town. Unfortunately, the capitol is not open for tours on Sunday:

We managed to squeeze ourselves into the bus parking area at Roger Williams National Memorial in downtown Providence:

The capitol can be seen across the river:

The National Memorial is housed in a small building. Including the 4.5 acres of park adjacent to the visitor center, this park is the 20th smallest NPS unit in the country:

Around the side of the building, there’s a garden featuring plants that Native Americans would have grown in the times of Roger Williams:

The visitor center interprets the life of Roger Williams, who, it can be argued, is the father of freedom of religion in the US:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Continuing south and east, we arrived at the town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, home of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. After confirming very carefully with the police, we parked curbside and headed towards the visitor center:

The historic district has cobblestone streets:

The visitor center is housed in a pair of old buildings. The exhibits were well done, and we watched an interesting film about the history of whaling in New Bedford:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

We decided to walk the historic district, which includes the oldest operating Customs building in the US:

The Seamen’s Bethel, featured in New Bedford resident Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick as the “Whaleman’s Chapel”:

We walked around the waterfront. Whaling, whose profits were derived from oil refined from whale blubber, declined as an industry in the 1860s after the discovery of source-drilled petroleum oil. Nowadays, the boats here ply the ocean for scallops and flatfish, not whales: