Here’s the reason for our seemingly random traverse of Rhode Island – we decided to do the Rhode Island Troll Trail and track down some of Thomas Dambo’s New England trolls. Weirdly, even though my mother was born in Rhode Island, and I went to collage right next door, I haven’t done a lot there. We were really impressed while driving around. As long as you avoid 95 at rush hour, everything is pretty close by, and there looks like a lot of things to do. We will probably be back.
Our first stop was Little Boulder at Browning Mill Pond in the Arcadia Wildlife Management area. He’s not too far up the trail from the parking lots, if you don’t want to go far, but we really enjoyed doing the whole loop.
I loved his hair and beard, and the earring. He has a lot of personality.
Our next two trolls are at the same location.
These two trolls are the original trolls of the group, and are both located at Ninigret Park. If you park in the lot near the playground, you can follow the troll footprints on the ground to find the first troll, Erik Rock. Erik’s right next to the pond, off one of the roads, so is super accessible. He’s near a beach where we ran into to the two masons that built the moon gate building a stone dragon that’ll be winding through the beach. So there will be more art there shortly.
Erik’s pretty chill. Sadly, someone threw his plaque in the pond.
The second troll is Greta Granit. She’s a bit of a walk into the woods, but she’s well sign posted. You wouldn’t know it from my pictures, but she was the most crowded troll. She’s in a small clearing, so everyone gets funneled into the same place, and people just kept appearing. Fortunately, everyone was in a good mood, and was great about letting everyone take pictures.
There are lots of hangings on the path leading to Greta – I included one of the stick hangings, but there was another great one of large quahog shells.
I also loved her hair. And despite how busy she is, she’s still very serene.
Our final troll on Friday was Iver Mudslidder, at Ryan Park in North Kingston.
You can’t beat Iver for sheer enthusiasm. He just looks so happy! He’s got the most interesting build as well, sitting on his little hill.
It was very hot when we got to Iver, and we really glad we’d parked at the Lafayette Road lot. That’s the closest lot to Iver. We ran into a couple that had parked at the far side of the park, and were not looking forward to walking all the way back in the heat. Fortunately, they had planned ahead and had plenty of water.
We were the only ones there when we found Iver – that was true of Little Boulder as well.
We could have gone to the last troll that Friday, but the real reason for our entire trip this weekend was to meet our new niece on Cape Cod, so we saved Mrs. Skipper for last, when we were on the way over to MA on Saturday morning. She’s in East Providence, at the Kettle Point Pier, which has an easy to find parking lot nearby. There are great views over Providence. We got there pretty early, and watched a whole bunch of joggers stop by to see her.
She’s great – just has some real presence over the harbor. And yes, I loved her hair.