Smith Castle

On Saturday after a couple of trips to the dump to continue our cleaning of the garage, we wanted to enjoy a nice Fall afternoon outside. Sally had seen listed in a "What's Going On" section of the paper or online, the fact that there was to be a Colonial Harvest Festival at The Smith Castle in Wickford. Sounded like a great idea, but what the heck is Smith Castle in Wickford. I know Wickford as a quaint little village in North Kingstown. I don't recall a "castle" there. Hmmm, let's take a look.

We packed up and headed out. Of course, it being about 12:30pm Una decided that the car seat was a wonderful place to take a nap. Rather than proceed right to Smith Castle we decided to cruise around Quonset Point. Wow! What a wonderful job they (Quonset Development Corporation) are doing in developing the old Naval Air Station into a fine industrial park. I've only been to Quonset once and that was to pickup an Admiral arriving at the terminal. We drove around and saw the marina, the beach, golf course, O'Club, and various companies doing business there. Quonset must be the off-load spot for thousands of Audi and VWs. There were acres and acres of new wrapped autos, and plenty of car carriers waiting to be loaded for delivery of the autos.

I was impressed. If you haven't driven around Quonset it's worth a couple of hours on a nice afternoon. Enough about Quonset. This is about Smith Castle.

We arrived at the signage along Rt 1 and immediately said, "UtOh" as there seemed to quite a few cars. Well, it was just that they had only a small parking lot along Route 1. The crowd when were were there was not overwhelming which made it kind of nice. What we did see was many docents dressed in period clothing ready to discuss what harvest life in the 1700s was like. We viewed spinners, outdoor cooking, candle making, large manual looms, a blacksmith. Oh, and the guy to the left with all his muskets. The Smith House was fun to stroll through. I know Sally and I will certainly go back for a more detailed tour.

We followed-up our visit to Smith Castle with a further drive South along Rt 1 to Wakefield. Sally was in need of a Mew's fix and I'm never one to shy away from one of their 69 microbrews on tap.

In case you haven't guessed it, it was a great day. Oh, more pictures of our time at Smith Castle can be seen on the slideshow on the upper right of our blog site (or linked here.)