Last updated: April 21, 2024

I love that I was able to take nine days and explore New England. While that’s definitely not enough time to thoroughly visit Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, it was enough time to get just a taste to know I want to go back!

Rhode Island

How much do you know about Rhode Island? If you were anything like me when I visited, not a lot! I did some research and found these nuggets:

• The smallest state
• Seventh least populated with 1.1 million residents
• Flower is the Violet
• Animal is the Morgan Horse
• Beverage is coffee milk

Additionally, I thought their state flag was cool.

We spent the day in Rhode Island with one goal to visit the Roger Williams National Memorial which commemorates the life of the founder of Rhode Island and a champion of the ideal of religious freedom. Williams, banished from Massachusetts for his beliefs, founded Providence in 1636. This colony served as a refuge where all could come to worship as their conscience dictated without interference from the state.

This site was established by Congress in 1965 to commemorate Williams’s “outstanding contributions to the development of the principles of freedom in this country.” The memorial, a 4.5 acre urban greenspace located at the foot of College Hill in downtown Providence, includes a freshwater spring which was the center of the settlement of Providence Plantations founded by Williams in 1636. It is on this site that Williams, through word and action, fought for the ideal that religion must not be subject to regulation by the state but, instead, that it should be a matter of individual conscience. It was a remarkable journey that brought Williams to what is now the capital of Rhode Island and to where he put his beliefs into practice, giving “shelter for persons distressed of conscience.”

For me, this is one of the more important National Park System sites. Roger Williams fought hard to give religious freedoms and today, we have the liberty and freedoms to worship and believe as we please.

I’m sure there are plenty of other things to do in Rhode Island and if you know what those are, I’d love to hear about them! Let me know below!