Hike, bike and eat your fill of clams on Block Island

Reporting from Block Island, R.I.—
I am standing atop Clay Head, a 70-foot-high bluff, looking over miles and miles of open ocean on a clear summer morning. It is an ideal way to greet a day that will include hiking, biking, birding, skimming stones and eating my weight in fried clams. And I have to smile. Back home in St. Louis, my wife, Nancy, and I had told a friend that we were heading for three days on this glorious island.

Blank stare. "Block Island. Where is that?"

Exactly. And fine with me if Block keeps a low pro. For all its craggy grandeur, Block Island has never been etched into the nation's consciousness quite like its big sisters Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts.

This rough-hewn beauty sits alone in the Atlantic, 13 miles off Rhode Island and 14 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island. Somehow it's in the middle of everything. It's a half-day trip for about 21 million people. The only year-round ferry departs every morning from the mainland at Point Judith, R.I. There are also seasonal ferries from New London, Conn., Newport, R.I., and Montauk, N.Y.

For people traveling to the Northeast, a short trip to Block Island by ferry can be combined with other destinations, such as New York or Boston. One can easily see the whole island on foot in a day — no need for a car — but the best way to get around is by bicycle, for about $30 a day.

The island is less than 11 square miles, one them a salt pond. But no matter how many thousands of people spill off the ferries, it offers abundant space to be alone. It's a wonderland of rolling hills, dunes, hay fields, bluffs and beaches. A greenway of walking trails criss-crosses the island.