Carpenter's Beach Matunuck RI

Our marching band performed last night at dusk for the Children's Light Parade at Mary Carpenter's Beach. People come from all over to spend summer days or weekends in these cottages and share them with their grandchildren. The houses are tiny and inches apart yet loved and decorated - a joyous trailer park feel. The community is close-knit and as intimate as a campground. People face the single-car-width "street" in beach chairs or from their teensy screened porches. Nearly every house is decorated with strings of night lights. Trying to find your cottage is a bit like getting lost looking for your car at a drive in. Luckily the "streets" are numbered. What brings families here is that it is affordable and within walking distance of the sand and surf. It's a delightful Yankee Mardi Gras shanty-town, a Rhode Island clam chowder version of the borscht belt in the Poconos. It's a magical place.