Many who have been following this blog may not realize that Plymouth Rock was the original inspiration for our entire adventure. Claire had learned about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock in school and had asked if we could ever go see it. Not wanting to do anything halfway we figured why not just turn the whole thing into an adventure. Throughout the entire trip she asked when we were going to get to this very key stop. She even asked about it at Disney!
The morning after our NYC adventure ended we made the trek up to a campground near Plymouth on Friday the 13th. Even though we got an early start, we made a miscalculation and made a stop relatively early while still in New Jersey. While we were stopped the traffic got nuts on the highways through Connecticut, so it took us the better part of the day to get there. It was a beautiful campground situated on a lake, and they had free bingo that night. Claire won $5 worth of candy, that I can assure you she did not need. As beautiful as this campground was the bathrooms and showers were, eh, rustic. Yeah, let’s go with rustic, so we were kind of happy to be moving on after one night.
In the morning we made the short trek over to the town of Plymouth where Claire got a very traditional pilgrim rainbow bagel for breakfast ;-), and we joined up with some families from Louisiana at the Jenny Museum for our scheduled walking tour of the town. The older gentleman who lead our tour was dressed in character, and gave us a tour of the town with backstories that painted Pilgrims as seemingly the source of all good that ever developed in the United States. His histrionic claims, some legitimate at varying levels I am sure, ranged from them being the fathers of representative democracy to treating the natives as equals, to inventing free market capitalism, to being the inspiration for the phrase “raining cats and dogs”. He sewed a few tall tales into the tour making it hard to know what was legitimate and what was exaggerated, but he was an engaging tour guide and Claire loved it. It was fascinating to learn how these early settlers survived, or at least how some of them did considering that 50% of them died the first winter. One important fact we learned was that despite common depictions there is no evidence a single buckle on hats, shoes or belts ever existed among the Pilgrims. Our tour guide was in historic clothing to show us what was more typical…. right down to his sketcher slip on shoes. We cut the old guy some slack. It was a lot of walking. The perfect weather made the walk a particularly beautiful way to start off the day. Of course we saw the Plymouth Rock in all its glory. Claire now feels she is complete.
We made our way out to the Plimoth Plantation reconstruction site and museum to view the re-enactment village. If you are wondering, the spelling is not a typo. The Pilgrims were apparently not very good at spelling so there are lots of ways to spell Plymouth/Plimoth. Here, there were in-character historical guides with fake English accents that would answer questions about life on the plantation while going about household chores or watering their gardens in the reconstructed homes of the plantation. It was engaging and fascinating, being one of the better re-enactment sites we saw on our trip.
Dave’s friend Phil had invited us to stay with them for a night at his in-laws beach house in Humarock, MA. It was only 45 min away so we arrived by mid afternoon, and settled in to drink some Coors light (Phil’s favorite) and wine before his wife, Sam, made a fabulous dinner. Saturday involved a great walk along the beach and hunting for colorful stones with Claire before we watched the World Cup Final. The plan was to only stay for one night, but Phil’s in-laws Tom and Joey were kind enough to invite us to stay one more night, even though Phil and Sam had to return home so they could make it to work on Monday. We really appreciated their hospitality and took the time to do some laundry, enjoy a nice dinner out, and relax for one last night and one more morning of rock hunting on the beach before Claire and Annie got dropped off at the Boston Airport.
Claire had started to get a little homesick and was asking about going home. The drive back to CO was going to be long with not a lot of interest for Claire along the route. The Southwest miles we had saved came in useful and the flights were cheap, so Dad decided to take one for the team and drive back by himself, though to be honest, Dad has friends along the way to hang out with so he was fine. Stops involved a friend in Western Connecticut, NE Pennsylvania, and Summersville, WV along with pitstops at the Frank Loyd Write Fallingwater house, the very well done flight 93 memorial and a lot of driving to power home.
It has been a grand adventure, but we are finally home. In the coming week we will hopefully find time to write a concluding article about our trip that highlights the things we learned and adventures coming ahead. Thanks for riding along with us.
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