New England Trip--Tues Oct 13

Today's adventures led us to go to the historical cities of Lexington and Concord. We first go to Lexington and grab a bite to eat at an Indian restaurant and can I say it was delectable!!!

We then went to the museum in Lexington dedicated to American history.

Isn't he almost hot? I mean I know he's dead, had a powdered-wool wig, and wood teeth... but all that power just in this one man?! Come on! That's very admirable to say the least!

If you look closely, you can see Dustin looking at me on the left and me taking the picture. Just an FYI all the pictures from today were "forbidden" so I didn't use a flash! haha

Paul Revere making his ride! I guess we learned that he was a dentist, inventor, a coroner, silver smith, blacksmith, goldsmith, surveyor, Currier and he would probably be shocked to realize he was remembered in history for this measly side job!
So in this same museum in Lexington was a room of clocks. I guess clocks were a huge thing in our country's past. This clock as gaudy as it is, is immaculate! We both love this clock and it belongs in my new house that Dustin bought me... if you are just catching up, take a look at two blog postings before this!
We also learned that this museum was funded by the masons. George Washington, was a mason! I absolutely loved this picture. Anyone want to buy it for our new house as our house warming present?

So I thought I had this picture turned before I posted it, but here we moved on to Concord. Concord is a literature-rich historical place. I absolutely loved this town!

Here's Dustin standing outside the Concord museum.
This is Ralph Waldo Emerson's writing room. He wrote in this little place and it has been preserved since his time on earth.

Yes, I want this sometime!!! This is my goal--Dustin is going to build this in my new house over in Newport, Ri.
Here's Emerson's house.
I have to stand next to the sign to prove that I was there and just didn't drive by or steal the pic from someone.
Louisa May Alcott's residence. Her family and Nathaniel Hawthorne's family kept switching houses as they were both growing up. This is the house she wrote Little Women in, but Nathaniel Hawthorne's house (yellow) was what she was writing about in Little Women.



Hawthorne Inn
Okay, probably one of my most favorite things I did today--Walden pond! It looks like a lake to me and they seem to call all fresh bodies of water out here "ponds." This place really was peaceful... no wonder that Thoreau wrote the book about this place! LOVED IT!!!
Such a nice oasis away from the city life.
As we end our ventures for the day we head through many small towns back to our hotel. This was just a random scenery pic on the way back.

This day was all about getting back to our roots with nature and freedom-- Um... Transcendentalist in me?? I L O V E Emerson & Thoreau.

New England Trip--Mon Oct 12th--Columbus Day

This morning we woke up refreshed and ready to see Boston. We look at the map and realize we are only about 10 minutes from downtown Boston. Not too bad of a drive, eh? We also have it planned that we are going to follow the Freedom Trail from the American Revolution.

So here we see the scenery driving into Boston.


This is on Atlantic Ave--the easternmost road that travels along the coast of Boston. This flag was kind of pretty. The Coast Guard base is just to the left of this building.
Thought this amphibious vehicle was hilarious, but made total sense after our endeavors that day. There is so much walking, climbing, and crazy traffic with no place to park!
First stop on the Freedom Trail: USS Constitution This is the oldest ship in service to this day. She is 221 years old. Here I am posing next to a "gun" or cannon if it were on land. This thing weighs as much as a Ford Explorer and recoils 4 feet once fired... They fire her three to four times a year.


This is what kept my eye most of the time waiting to see "Old Iron Sides." This is a destroyer from WWII. The last time it saw battle was Korea.


Here I am on the "head" of the ship. This is where the crew would "hit the head" or do their personal waste business and allow the water to rise above and wash it all off.
Here we see Bunker Hill Monument. Notice, we see this about 2 1/2 miles away at the USS Constitution site.


We got to the bad boy and saw we had to climb it! 294 stair steps straight up in the air. We are sweaty and I'm quite frankly pissed off!
Dustin took pictures of the view while I was still upset sitting on the bench!
Here I am having a conversation with Uncle Butch about how "awesome" this site was... Ok it was pretty cool, but come on! This was outrageously high. Didn't they hear of elevators?! 294 STAIRS straight up! Actually going up was more of a pain just because I got out of breath and was sweaty after having a good hair day. THEN the way down was so much easier on the lungs, BUT my legs were shaking so bad when I got done. I wish I had videotaped my way up and down. I complained the whole time, but hey, all in the name of Freedom, right?!
So I calmed down a bit when we got back to the car and Dustin dropped me off to step out and get a pic of Paul Revere.
Here is where the Boston Massacre happened.

We got so fed up with the traffic, not being able to park to take pics of the scenery that we decided to look for the Cheer's bar. Ironically we got a parking spot on the street for FREE because it was Columbus Day AND we didn't have to walk every far! So we get there and realize we have to walk down MORE stairs to get to the restaurant/bar. Ugh! I'm sure you can only imagine my agony. Did I mention that I had an awful headache by now? I believe the 294 stairs straight up in the air didn't combine well with my asthma and allergies flaring. We hadn't eaten but a bagel for breakfast and it was nearly 1500! So I got a Sprite and Dustin had some kind of ale. We had some of the best Nachos ever, and boy were they refreshing!
You can tell I'm still a bit sweaty! haha
Ok so we're done with downtown Boston and head to Harvard. This is the water way with sail boats as we cross into Cambridge.

Here is an angel, one of those crazy real human things ya know? He was doing the motions of an angel you see at Menards during the holiday season that are electronic with fiberoptic lights! I bought a Harvard sweatshirt at the Harvard bookstore, then I continued my liberal experience and bought a New Yorker at a news stand!
All in all today was an awesome day! On our way back we decided to stop at Hanscom AFB. We had been craving Anthony's Pizza and of course when we get there the streets are all rolled up with NO Anthony's Pizza in sight. So we head back to our hotel and stop at the British Beer Company. We get take out and go back to the hotel and relax.

Boy what a day. Tired and stressed out from the 294 stair steps straight up Bunker Hill Monument, the driving, the people, no parking--Whew!

New England Trip--Sun Oct 11th

It is fall break time for me, so Dustin and I planned to take a vacation to New England. Neither of us have been to New England and we wanted to see the land where our Freedom began. We got on the plane in Indianapolis at 8:35 am, landed in Midway, Chicago, left there and landed in Providence, RI around 11:30 am. That left us with a whole day of touring.

The first step--get our rental car at Thrifty. They gave us a 2010 Ford Fusion. It's very luxurious actually! Came standard with Sirius :) so we were quite happy!

Here we have some scenery in Rhode Island:

Welcome to Kennedy land...



We saw a ton of these windmills on the way to Newport, Rhode Island.

We made it to Newport! We talked to the guy in this visitor's center and he said, "Oh so I see you're Baltimore Colt's fans..." Even though he harassed us, he did give us a FREE Rhode Island map... I say FREE because everywhere else wanted to charge for a map for Rhode Island.We ate at this restaurant that had some of the best calamari and crab cakes! Dustin had some kind of German wheat beer and I had a blue berry ale :)

When we finished with the dinner we went back to the car. They charged $1.50 per half hour for parking--YIKES! So anyway we got out of there pretty cheap and followed a tourist map and found my new house! Can you believe it? Dustin is going to buy this for me :)He had to show me what my life would be like living on the coast, fishing, and enduring the refreshing salty wind!

He said that my neighbors had houses looking like farms... See I'm pointing to them!More beautiful scenery of the Atlantic Ocean at the bottom of Newport.

Here's a pic of our rental car.The light house just about a mile from my new house.

This house has such a Japanese feel, doesn't it?
Ok so here are some other neighbors :) I absolutely love this house. There was a "mansions tour" and so we drove the tour and took a ton of pics. We ended up going kind of fast through the last part because I started getting depressed, especially since many of the houses at 9+ chimneys!




Shopping district in Newport. Here we stopped to get the maps out and head to our hotel in Natik, Massachusetts.
A really cool beach on the way out of Newport.
We made it to the hotel, got ourselves relaxed for a minute, and decided to find something to eat. We ended up at John Harvard's Restaurant and Brewery. We both had burgers and a beer, saw a homosexual guy pull up in an MG and meet his "buddies" who happened to sit next to us, watch the Patriots lose to the Broncos, and watch the kick off of the Colt's game!
This place is beautiful. Our hotel is across from a large shopping mall and right next to Starbucks inside of a Dick's Sporting Goods.