Stuff, Part II: Boston
At some point over last summer, Mel let me borrow a book called “The Physick of Deliverance Dane.” Uncharacteristcally for me these days, I actually started reading it. AND I finished it. (I used to be a great reader…now I can’t really say that, and I’m lucky to finish something I start. Yeah, sometimes I wonder where my old self went, and someday I’ll find her again.)
I digress.
Anyhow, this book is about the Salem witch trials. I wasn’t more than ten pages into it when I thought, “I have to go there.” Now THAT part of me is alive and well. Once I get an idea like that into my head, it takes a lot to derail me from my goal. Jesse gets a very limited amount of time off of work, and I get a ridiculous amount, so I knew he probably couldn’t go. But I needed someone to scheme with me. Someone who loved adventure as much as I do. Someone whose soul feeds off of wandering and experiencing and seeing things you’ve only read about or learned about in history class.
Yeah, I’m digressing again.
Anyhow, I got Kate on board (and I tempted her with Salem and old school Boston in October – our favorite time of year!). Then we recruited Melissa. And luckily, Jesse let us do it (I say that because if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t have wanted him to go without me). And Addie got well from about two weeks of illness just in time to head to Boston at the end of October.
It was a fantastic trip. It was the kind of trip that makes me feel alive. Or really awake to the world around me. (Like that quote from Joe Vs. the Volcano, “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” Traveling somewhere new, or even somewhere I love and can’t get enough of, makes me feel awake and in constant total amazement.)
The first full day we were there, we went to Lexington & Concord and saw where the Revolutionary War started. It felt humbling to stand where so many events happened that we just take for granted. We visited the Paul Revere sites, the town of Concord, then the North Bridge sites (the “shot heard around the world” bridge – that park had the creepiest bathroom I’ve ever seen…random, I know). Then we visited all the literary sites in the area like Louisa May Alcott’s home and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s home. Kate and I had a memorable moment of running through the Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, searching for the famous writers’ graves. We found them, but not before it started to get a little dark, and we started to (delightfully) freak ourselves out. As usual (for my pace of running around and cramming things in), we got to our last site of Walden Pond close to dark so had to do some hurrying to see anything, but it was a beautiful day. We ended it at Dunkin Donuts, of course.
At the Paul Revere monument. Addie was such a fun little traveler.
Burial Hill in Concord. Cemeteries are one of Kate’s fascinations, so we made a point of going to a lot of them!
Another one of Kate’s fav’s: the Double D.
We spent a day in Boston, following the Freedom Trail. It was a bit rainy, but beautiful and historic all the same. Then we visited Beacon Hill and visited the fanciest 7-11 (of course!) I’ve ever seen.
The obligatory “Burial Hill” – one of our first stops on the Freedom Trail.
The three of us girls at the monument of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The fancy 7-11…and Addie downing my slurpee.
We started our Sunday by going to church in Cambridge. Then we spent the rest of the day driving down through Plymouth, visiting the town where the pilgrims landed and established their colony, then driving up through Cape Cod. Cape Cod was beautiful (and lighthouses galore!), and I bet it would be even more beautiful in the summer! We stopped at the famous red-and-white lighthouse, and had a fun photo shoot at the “three sisters” lighthouses which had been relocated from the shore to a park. We ended the day in Provincetown. A WEIRD place. Just a funky vibe there. (Turns out the pilgrims landed there first, and even they found it weird and had to move on again to Plymouth!)
We just love this picture (outside the church) for some reason. What a stinkin’ cutie Addie is!
I used to be a real lighthouse fanatic, and still do find them fascinating and mystical somehow. Can’t explain why.
Addie seriously thought she was in a photo shoot. Could she be cuter? (This was on the steps of one of the “Three Sisters.”)
We spent our last day doing the really creepy stuff: exploring Salem. Being October, it was one big Halloween party! We started the day by stopping in Marblehead and eating lunch there, then went on to Salem where we visited the With Trial Memorial, then took a “haunted Salem” tour on a trolley. I must say, I love Halloween, and this has to be my biggest tribute to such a strange holiday yet!
On the beach at Marblehead.
Seesa and Kate at the Witch Trial Memorial.
On the ghost tour in Salem.
It was such a great trip, full of exploring historic sites (and a lot of cemeteries), experiencing new things, getting lost, and of course the inherent silliness and hilarity that comes from traveling with the girls. Thanks for such a fun adventure, girls!
(That was fun reliving it. *sigh*)
Oh, and I guess I should add that all of these photos are courtesy of Kate. Addie managed to break my camera on the first day with that magic touch of hers, so I didn’t end up with very many of my own. Thanks Kate!












































































