Scenic Foliage Drives →
Rhode Island Foliage Driving Tour
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Cross the river on Washington Street to the foot of College Hill, home to Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, and you're in history's lap. Straight ahead at the junction of North Main Street is the First Baptist Church in America, beautiful in its clapboard simplicity, majestic for its situation at the foot of one of the finest and most beautifully restored neighborhoods of 18th- and 19th-century homes in the Northeast. This is the capital city's historic East Side, and the next street ahead of you is Benefit Street, its heart. Parking is expensive, but don't be daunted; there are plenty of side streets where you can park your car. To arrive at Benefit Street, turn left onto North Main Street -- Waterman Street, which Washington morphs into once you've crossed the Providence River, is a one-way street -- and turn right onto any of the side streets that shoot off of North Main.
Don't miss the Museum of Art (which houses more than 80,000 diverse works) at the Rhode Island School of Design, the Providence Athenaeum (the fourth-oldest library in the country, designed by William Strickland. Here you will see Napoleon's commissioned book Description de L'Egypte, and unique 19th-century collections in natural history and travel.), and the historic John Brown House (a 1786 brick Georgian-style mansion with a two-acre lawn, once owned by a wealthy Providence merchant. John Quincy Adams described the house as "the most magnificent and elegant private mansion that I have ever seen on this continent."), all within easy walking distance of one another.
For the next leg of our trip, drive to Waterman Street and take a right onto Gano Street. At the end of Gano, hop onto Interstate 195 east and drive two miles, to exit 7, for Route 114 south, the Wampanoag Trail. Reset the odometer.
Within four scant miles, as you pass from East Providence into Barrington, the landscape will start to change. It flattens out. The autumn light turns gold and the trees give way to riverfront and saltwater marshes, where egrets and great blue heron poke about in the tawny eelgrass. One can imagine how peacefully the Wampanoag tribe who inhabited this area (now the towns of Barrington, Warren, and Bristol) must have lived, hunting and fishing this lush land.
We hope that you will rest as peacefully tonight. Comfortable lodging and good food await in the quiet of East Bay.
Day Two
Three towns, all located on Route 114 between Providence and Newport, make up East Bay. Barrington is largely a bedroom community for Providence; Warren is authentic New England at its best; and Bristol is a historic seaport with all the amenities of a tourist town. These Bristol County towns share Narragansett Bay, miles of salt marshes dotted with shorebirds, a 14-mile scenic bike path, stunning architecture, and a preponderance of excellent antiques shops.
The town of Bristol is the annual site of one of the nation's oldest and biggest Fourth of July parades. Exactly 11.3 miles from the start of the Wampanoag Trail, turn right into Colt State Park.
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