The Rest of the Thanksgiving Whimventure®
What I’m thankful for...
As you probably heard Suen and I were balloon Handlders in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for teh second time & were on the (now famous) Derpy Tiger balloon. The question is after that, what’s next?
Some of you would think about a quiet debate filled dinner with family… not us. We took the afternoon watched the end of the dog show and then the rebroadcast of the parade in our hotel room until we headed down to the hotel bar hand ate snacks, preparing for the next part of this Whimventure® which would take us out of the city and into the wilds of Rhode Island.
While there are millions of things to do in New York City, there are also millions and millions of people there trying to do all the millions of things. Most of those museums we’ve been to, most of the stores we’ve wandered through, we’ve seen a few shows and Black Friday is not the best time for an introvert to be in the city. We decided to head out and see about seeing the Thomas Dambo trolls in Rhode Island, there ate five of them and Rhode Island doesn’t have that much square footage to wander around.
We picked up Alfie (my MINI Roadster- yes, I named my car) from his safe space in Hoboken and headed towards the trolls. Traffic was as to be expected and took us a large portion of the day to get out of the New York Area. Because Whimventuring calls for random stops, we did stop at the PEZ visitors Center in Orange, Connecticut for a brief stop. We’d been there once before, but that was a quick stop and this time we lingered a bit more, especially since they had a scavenger hunt.
After learning more that we ever thought possible about PEZ we left the PEZ Visitor’s Center (and after logging the nearby cache) we were off to Rhode Island and to see some Trolls!
Trollhunting in Rhode Island
Last time we were in Rhode Island we had skirted the northern portion and picked up a few caches (related to the great children’s author H.P. Lovecraft). Just enough to be able to color in the map as we tend to do. With days being short we hoped to be able to see a couple trolls before sunset.
After visiting Erik and Greta we headed for a hotel and dinner. This usually means a nice brewpub. During dinner we realized that we had completed the geocaching County challenge for Rhode Island by finding a cache in each of the five counties, just goes to show how hardworking, planning and tenacity pay off in the long run.
So the next step was to find the remaining Trolls along with the corresponding Challenge cache. This would be Cecil’s first State County Challenge he’s completed, so the monkey was excited… but first more Trolls!
As we completed our Troll Hunt in Rhode Island it was interesting to see how Thomas Dambo’s gives each troll their own personality, you can see how a few things remain constant while others have developed over the years moving from more “human” to more troll-like in the way they have been done… than again that could just be me trying to put a high brow spin on looking at art. The first two Trolls in Rhode Island definitely seem to look more “Human” in their faces, than the newer trolls.
My favorite Troll from this trip? That would be like picking your favorite child (hence why I don’t have kids). Each one has some great things about them, some it’s how they fit in with their location others have something to do with the pure whimsy they convey. This go around I think the sereneness of the location and everything about him made Young Boulder a favorite for this trip, but I still loved all of them.
As we began heading home were heard about the upcoming snowmaggedon and figured it’s all part of Whimventuring. We really didn’t see any evidence until we got off the interstate and almost into our neighborhood. Worst thing was it did get colder and windier. For the short term we’re home for the remainder of the year, but should the whim strike we could be off again doing something frivolous and flitting off somewhere else just to upset the Dursleys - maybe in search of Trolls, maybe in search of…
“In Search of…” 🤔 sounds like that would be a good title for a TV show.
As for what I’m thankful for… I’m thankful to find someone (not a stuffed monkey - although no complaints about him) to push me out and doesn’t roll their eyes when I think about stopping at a silly place. Someone who puts up with me (and a stuffed monkey) and doesn’t tell me I should be “normal” or fit into societies idea of what a 60 year old retiree should be. I’m also thankful for the people around me who don’t seem to mind either.
As always Bruce writes about adventures that get you thinking. Here the artistic woodworking yielding the trolls, their subjects and whether they'll take the winter storms? And his and Sue's ability to get home before 'The Big and Beautiful Storm' hit is indicative of their prior experiences with weather! But to be home for the holidays - really? Stay tuned. My bet is Cecil will hit the road before long! Of course Bruce, thanks for another ourstanding write up!