Our little retirement “view with a house AND a bike path”…

When my husband Barry and I fell in love with our little retirement fixer-upper “view with a house”, the East Bay Bike Path (virtually IN our back yard) was a very big draw for us.

The Bike Path travels 14.5 miles, following the path of the former Providence and Bristol Railroad. At its peak, the Providence, Warren & Bristol Railroad (owned by the New Haven Railroad) was an electrified commuter rail line, seeing about 100 trains daily. In 1937, the company switched over to gas-electric cars. Ultimately, passenger service was completely discontinued and by 1938, due to irreparable damage done by a hurricane that year, rendering the PW&B a freight-only railroad.

The completed Bike Path was dedicated in 1992 and an 8.5 mile on-road, via bike lane, was completed in 2011, linking the East Bay Bike Path with the south tip of the Blackstone River Bikeway, a 48-mile (77 km) trail, which will link Providence with Worcester, MA.

We love the history of this Bike Path, and living one town over while raising our family, we spent many, many hours on this Bike Path with our children – biking, rollerblading and walking it while enjoying its beauty of water views, lush greenery, the City of Providence at one end and little New England towns at the other end.

So here we were, our back yard sloping via one of many small paths directly onto the bike path we love so very much.

The only problem, if one can call it that, was that friends traveling the Bike Path couldn’t tell which home was ours from the path itself. I get this, because on more than one occasion I’ve actually taken “our path” to find myself in someone else’s back yard. Thank goodness all of our neighbors our very friendly and get this, too!

So anyway.

Our house is close to the street, making our back yard the greater part of our property. Many decades ago, the owner of our home built a garage, set back from the home, and the back of this garage is seen from the Bike Path.  Barry and I figured that we could attach something… something from the back peak of our garage that we could tell friends to look for.

Hmmmmm.

And more hmmmmm.

What? What? What would be big enough to be seen and yet fun and personal and kinda interesting, too?

Barry and I decided to just let whatever it was just speak to us.

And it did!

We are yard sale, antique show, artsy things, Brimfield’s kind of people, and it was at Brimfield’s that Barry spotted this…

… a vintage, authentic Railroad Crossing SIGN.

It was a SIGN!

Barry loved the idea of combining the history of the railroad and Bike Path to our home.

I was totally aboard. (Get it?!)

Done.

We haggled the priced down (because that’s what you do at Brimfield’s!) and headed home with not only a perfect piece, but a bargain, as well…

(Believe me, that SIGN is heavy and not all the easy to carry!)

Well, yesterday our wonderful son-in-law Brian set up his ladder and headed up to the peak of the back of our garage and hung our visible SIGN of just where we reside, and I took photographs from the Bike Path and all the way up our back yard…

We love reflecting the history of our beautiful Bike Path, while having a bit of fun doing it.

Yes.

It’s a SIGN.