It’s been five or six weeks since we’ve been on the island: much too long! The island seems not to hold a grudge, however, and gave us three wonderful sunsets in as many afternoons this weekend. We were heading home as the sun set on Sunday, but we stopped to snap this shot over the Great Salt Pond.
Our last trip out to the island already seems so long ago! It’s hard to believe it was less than a month, and harder still to believe that the fall season is almost over. On that last trip, we spent a good part of Friday on the standby line at Point Judith–from an hour before the first ferry of the morning until the 3:30pm ferry, when we finally got the car onto the boat. “We have to get a house someplace closer,” Dan pretended to complain that evening. “We left the house at 6am, and we didn’t get here until 5pm.” But on a day that promised only clouds and rain, the sky gave us a treat at Pt. Judith as the storm system rolled in–and another one on the island when the sun lined up with a gap in the clouds for an unexpected display.
Cloud front moving in at Pt. Judith
A hole in the clouds just at sunset
Today I am in an oceanside town, but it’s the Pacific Ocean. So our visits to the archives continue with this dazzler from October 18, 2003.
Sunset over Sachem Pond, October 18, 2003
I am currently visiting seaboard locations far south of Block Island. This week’s Golden Grove sunset comes from the archives. The year is 2003, and judging from where the sun is setting, I’d say it’s maybe late April or early May.
Sunset with lighthouse, late April 2003
The island was stunning this past weekend. Here is a pair of photos that witness the sky display from the deck on Saturday.
Looking southwest over Sachem Pond, 4:30pm
Sunset over Sachem Pond, 6:10pm
Starting this week, I’m beginning a new feature on this blog. Every Tuesday or Wednesday, when possible, I’ll post a picture from my archive of Block Island photos. Most of these pictures are taken from the deck of my house on Block Island, or from a nearby location. And the great majority of these photos are sunset photos, because that’s the specialty on the deck of my house: A view over the water, the freshest air anywhere, a glass of fine wine or a made-from-scratch margarita, and the World’s Best Sunsets.
Why is this feature called “Views near Golden Grove“? Because the part of the island where my house is located is known by that name. And why would a treeless sweep of glacial till be called “Golden Grove”? Because the brig Golden Grove, on its way from Halifax to Ireland, was shipwrecked just off the coast here in the winter one year late in the 18th century. And why, the astute reader, might persist, would a ship bound from Halifax to Ireland be sailing (much less grounded) anywhere near Block Island?
Good question.
In any case, the crew were all saved, and some of them made the island their home. The cargo of pork and lard occasioned many a trip out to what was left of the Golden Grove that winter to augment the island diet. And the place name stuck.
To start things off, here is the sunset near Golden Grove on October 3, 2009, three days ago.
Block Island sunset October 3, 2009