Newport County High Point Trip Report
Date: July 5, 2003
Author: Dan Case
Research conducted under less hasty conditions would have revealed to me what it
did only later: that Pocasset Hill is not on Aquidneck Island but the mainland
portion of the county, in North Tiverton rather than Portsmouth (a town that,
driving around, I couldn't help but think about "The Last Detail"). I had been
so geared up to have this be right on the little circular route I had pegged for
myself that, upon seeing that Route 138 was nearby, I just figured that it would
be on the island. As it was, I wasted a precious hour or so near the end of the
day driving up and down the island, finding a couple of flat-earthed reservoirs
but nothing like what I was reading about in the trip reports, and perhaps
eventually the actual highpoint of the island - one of three areas, on the
Prudence Island USGS quadrangle (260+ ft). But eventually I decided to give up.
I also note that while the map refers to the island as Rhode, on this trip and
ones I took here as a child when my uncle co-owned a briefly-successful seafood
restaurant in Newport that it seems the locals prefer to refer to this piece of
land as Aquidneck. What's the deal?