From Ezaias' Travel Journal - Rhode Island

August 22, 2019

Today my family and I went to Napatree Point. It is the southern and western most point of RI. It is also a peninsula (a peninsula is a piece of land that is mostly surrounded by water but is also connected to the main land). Florida is a peninsula. I loved looking for the crabs! I did not like the sandy waves. We saw Piping Plovers looking for food when a wave washed out.  When the wave came back in, they would run like the wind, their feet moving so fast you would not be able to see them! Piping Plovers are endangered! (More on that later.)

September 8, 2019

My family and I went to the RISD museum. We visited the largest wooden Japanese statue in the USA. It was recovered from a temple that was burned down hundreds of years ago! The buddhas name is Dainichi, which means great sun. They believe that he is the generative force* of all life.

*generative - having the power or function of generating, originating, producing or reproducing.
*force - (noun) strength or energy exerted: cause of motion or change: active power. 


Here are some other facts I learned about Rhode Island:

• There is 400 miles of coastline in RI!
• There are 5 Native American tribes from Rhode Island (Narragansett, Niantic Eastern, Nipmuc, Pequot, and Wampanoag).
• There are 11 endangered and threatened species in Rhode Island, including:
• *from the US Fish and Wildlife website
• The Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia Mydas) has a heart-shaped shell, small head and single-clawed flippers. Generally found in fairly shallow waters inside reefs, bays and inlets, except when migrating, green sea turtles eat sea grasses and marine algae. They can reach up to 400 pounds and reach 43 inches in length. Juvenile green sea turtles are omnivorous and are found in southern tropical waters. A major factor contributing to their decline worldwide is commercial harvest for eggs and meat. 

• The Piping Plover (Charadrius Melodus) is a small, stocky, sandy-colored bird resembling a sandpiper. Piping Plovers are found along the entire Atlantic coast in open, sandy habitat on outer beaches, where they feed and nest. Its current decline is attributed to increased development and recreational use of beaches. The most recent surveys place the Atlantic population at less than 2,000 pairs. In a recent survey in the Bahamas, biologists counted more than 1,000 individual Piping Plovers, distinguishing the Bahamas as hosting the second-highest wintering population in the world. 

• The New England Cottontail (Sylvilagus Transitionalis) population numbers are declining. As recently as 1960, New England Cottontails were found east of the Hudson River in New York, across all of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, north to southern Vermont and New Hampshire and into southern Maine. Today, this rabbit's range has shrunk by about 86 percent. Its number are so greatly diminished that it can no loner be found in Vermont and has been reduced to only five small populations throughout its historic range. 

Napatree Point is a Conversation Area, which explains why we saw endangered animals here. 

To get to the beach we had to go over big dune-ish things. 

I found some kind of crab. 

It was kind of weird. 

The sticks look like tentacles. 

It's us three sitting on a tree! (That's a song I made up.) There was a lot of driftwood on the beach. 

Simeon looks really excited about that crazy wave behind him.

That's my hair on my head, not seaweed! 

We thought the tide was going out but Mama told us it was coming in. We've been learning about ocean tides recently, it's a little bit confusing. 

This is the western most point on Rhode Island and we were there at sunset!

This is the Dainichi statue I mentioned. 

It looked like it had been chewed up by termites. It's bigger than it looks in this picture. 

~ <3 Ezaias