An inland postcard from R.I. Route 102

The 42-mile country road curves down from the state’s head in North Smithfield, winding south through bucolic Glocester, Burrillville, Scituate, Foster and then cutting across Coventry, West Greenwich, and Exeter, before bending east to the ocean through North Kingstown, and ending at the quaint village of Wickford.

I spent the better part of a day traversing the road, stopping at tiny shops and conservation areas and absorbing some fascinating places of historic note along the way. I started up in the North Smithfield village of Slatersville, known as America’s first planned industrial mill village, with its many surviving mill homes and a gorgeous Colonial-era church on Slatersville Green, its white spire jutting into blue sky, all part of an area on the National Register of Historic Places.

Next I cut down into Burrillville, and if you come here, bring your appetite. This is the home of Wright’s Farm Restaurant, which began life as a humble family-style restaurant in 1972 and now seats 1,400, serving chicken and macaroni - and almost nothing else. Also here is the kitschy looking Mr. Doughboy with its chipped-paint neon sign, 2,000-feet of train track around the property (with working train), batting cages, and miniature golf course, all built by its workaholic owner, Robert Sweeney, who before starting this classic roadside restaurant 26 years ago was an optical design engineer.

“I bought a shack that a guy had used to make doughboys down by the lake and then moved it up here,’’ said Sweeney of the fried dough treat dusted with confectioner’s sugar. “The shack’s still out front. We use it for the ticket booth.’’

The place (a refurbished Kentucky Fried Chicken building) has been open daily since 1985, never closing, open even on parts of every holiday, Sweeney said. It attracts a largely local clientele, but also people from as far away as Westerly some 45 miles south. Popular items are its french fries, clam cakes, wieners, fish and chips, and, naturally, doughboys.

Unique history can be found down in Glocester, particularly in the village of Chepachet. It is as pretty as a New England postcard and home to Brown and Hopkins, the country’s oldest continually operating general store, starting life in 1809 and still with its ancient candy counter.

Right outside is the tragically named Elephant Bridge over the Chepachet River. In 1826, Betty, an elephant with a traveling circus, got loose and was shot dead by a local man, even though the creature could have been captured. The man, it seemed, was trying to disprove the circus owner’s hyperbolic claim that “nothing could pierce the side of this great beast.’’ Unfortunately for Betty, a bullet did.

And speaking of bad ends for poor animals, nearby is a hill that, before it became the Chepachet Cemetery, was the site of the final Dorr Rebellion battle in 1842 in which only a cow was reportedly killed.

Driving on, I cut through miles of forest, the roadbanks blanketed thick with pine needles, seeing a farm stand here and there but for the most part nothing but smooth, winding country road, gap-toothed stone walls, ancient barns, and tiny family graveyards. In foliage season, this is a must-ride road, skirting the sparkling Scituate Reservoir, Providence’s drinking-water supply.

This massive body of water was created in 1926 at the expense of several villages that were taken by eminent domain and drowned, in the process destroying nearly 1,200 buildings, including homes, mills, churches, and schools, forcing 1,600 people to find another place to live - and 1,500 dead a new place to rest.

The graves were transplanted, some to Rockland Historic Cemetery in Scituate, a huge hump of a hill that on the day I visited had wind roaring over it, and where one gravestone carried the chilly portend: “Dear friends, don’t weep, I am laid to sleep, my sun went down at noon. And you must my companions be God only knows how soon.’’

The road rolled on, through Foster (not far away, on Route 101, is Jerimoth Hill, the state’s highest point at 812 feet above sea level) and Coventry, spilling into West Greenwich, cutting by the Hianloland Fire Station, aptly named when you pronounce it - “high and low land’’ - and notice the area’s undulating landscape.

And although rural West Greenwich is one of the state’s least densely populated communities, Interstate 95 cuts through, making it ideal for the state’s only 24-hour truck stop, that claim made on a towering sign burning into the night and visible from the highway, a most welcome sight for those needing a restroom in the wee hours. While not exactly on a scenic tour by most standards, the truck stop is home to Tommy’s Place Restaurant, where you can get a decent chicken barbecue dinner for eight bucks.

Down in Exeter dwells a bit of chilling history. At the Chestnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery lies the body of Mercy Brown, an alleged vampire whose body was exhumed in 1892, and her heart removed and burned. More pleasantly, just down the road is Blueberry Hill Farm, a working 150-acre farm that is fronted on Route 102 and where you’ll find Blueberry Hill Farm store and Clark Whitford, 77, who opened the place 35 years ago.

Run by Whitford and his son Jason, the store sells some convenience items and coffee and pastry in the morning, but mostly hay and grain out back. The elder Whitford is soft-spoken and gracious, telling visitors about Blueberry Hill’s heyday as a dairy farm. They still have cows, he said, mostly for shows. Inside the dark store are all manner of photos of dairy days long gone. A sign on a beam reads: “My cow died so I don’t need your bull.’’

But bull you’ll find here, admitted Whitford with a laugh, mostly from the elderly men who routinely gather outside on the porch, or inside on raggedy chairs. Many of them are farmers in bib overalls. When you pull up they make you feel as if you’ve just driven onto a page of Yankee magazine.

“All I know is cows; my father had them, I had them, my son has them,’’ said Whitford, who also worked for many years as a state maintenance man, pointing to a dusty stack of old dairy industry magazines. “Still do shows, some.’’

Nearing the end of Route 102, I drive through busy North Kingstown, past McKay’s Front Porch, which sells outdoor furniture, including Adirondack chairs - and where on the front lawn is a giant, 10-foot-tall model for show only and in which many families have posed for photos.

You have the unmistakable sense of getting closer to the ocean here when you see things like a mailbox held up by a large wooden fisherman, screaming-yellow slicker and all, and a yard festooned with a garish assortment of brightly colored buoys, reportedly a source of consternation to the local car dealer adjacent to it.

And though Route 102 ends where Route 1A begins, it’s worth taking a short left onto Brown Street, the picturesque road that juts into historic Wickford Village, at the end of which you’ll find The Book Garden, a small, cramped bookstore loaded with great reads, old and new. As my day ended, I thought of something Whitford had told me, that when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.

Sitting down to a midafternoon sandwich at the nearby wharf-side Beach Rose Café with a local newspaper, I realized the man could not have been more right.

Paul E. Kandarian can be reached at kandarian@globe.com.