Tuesday, May 10

This woodsy campground is a place Massachusetts families come back to year after year. There is a lake, canoes, cabins, a hand-built log-cabin restaurant-and-camp store. The restaurant has two pianos with little signs on them saying, "if all you know how to play is chopsticks, please don't play it more than twice in a row" and the store sells white bumper stickers of this place with forest green lettering "I'd rather be camping at Pinewood Lodge." Each campsite has a fire circle made of granite rocks, and each fire circle has a boulder at the back of it, as sort of a wall. It's very nice I think. Perhaps my favorite private campground so far.

We drove out to the coast here in Plymouth, to look around, and we found Plymouth Rock:

It turns out that the Pilgrims checked out Cape Cod before coming to Plymouth. Provincetown is actually the first place they landed. Then, when they came to Plymouth, they left the Mayflower a mile and a half offshore, so they didn't exactly pull up to this rock. They came over to the mainland in a small boat. Maybe they stepped on this rock from the boat, but I kinda wonder--it's not very level. The reason we know about this rock is that a hundred years after the Pilgrims had arrived, a local man said that the Pilgrims stepped onto it.

Near the rock is a replica of the Mayflower, built in the 1950s:

We went aboard. Here is where the officers slept, in the tall part at the back of the ship:

It's hard to imagine 100 people living onboard for the cruise from England, but they also spent the whole first winter here, a mile from shore. And many died:

Just opposite the Mayflower is this kitchy little spot. There really aren't many of these in Plymouth, but I thought this one had a funny enough name to photograph:

Mark bought a ticket to see the Red Sox play tomorrow, and Katie and I plan to explore old-timey Plimoth Plantation. In figuring out who should take the camera, Mark suggested we buy a second one, a tiny one I can keep in my purse. So we headed to Best Buy and found a little Canon under $200. It's as small as a deck of cards, and has 3.2 megapixels. I love it. Here is the first picture taken with it (unbeknownst to me):

Before dinner, Katie and I walked to the playground here, near the lake, and I tried it out:

After dinner, I made a huge fire from our last Duraflame and the piles of sticks and twigs I found around camp. Then we turned in. A nice day.

Wednesday, May 11

This morning, Katie and I dropped Mark off at the train station near here. He went to Boston to see the Red Sox play at Fenway at 1pm. It's a gorgeous day, and we'd all go to the game, except the tickets are a little pricey (the cheapest he could find was $40/seat). Here are some pictures he took:





Mark said that this guy, playing 5-gallon bucket drums, was really good.

While Mark saw the game and Boston, Katie and I went to "Plimoth Plantation," a recreation of the Pilgrims' 1620s settlement. They pretend it is 1627, when they weren't starving so badly, and there were 35 families. Here are some pics:

On our way into the walled colony. When I got to where Katie is, I looked down and saw a tiny piece of blue and white pottery. It looked to be 19th century; I pocketed it to ask someone about if I got the chance.

Katie's favorite part was seeing the animals, particularly the two cows which are beyond these goats. I found a handful of red hair from the red cow. The hair was very soft, but the cow was ornery--kept hollering whenever kids would talk to him. He had a tail that was so long that the hairs rubbed on the ground.

The road down the middle of the colony.

These women asked for a volunteer to help them, and when he offered, they said, "Good, take the guts out of this fish." He was a very good sport, after he got over his queasiness: when he finished, he offered to keep helping.

As we left by this dirt road, Katie wanted to stop and play in the dirt, so I found a log to sit on and watched butterflies and bees buzz around. Beside the log, on a dried cornstalk, was a green snail. Katie fell in love with the snail, and we left with it. She showed it to everyone she could find on the way out, including the ladies at the gift shop, who told me that the blue and white pottery I found would have belonged to the Hornblowers, who had a summer cottage on the property in the 19th century. I bought some seeds to plant next year.

Here is "katie the snail" in her cup with some lettuce and water in it. Katie is very excited about having a pet, even though "snails don't live very long." Here is one more picture:

Thursday, May 12

The weather was nice, so we all headed out to explore Cape Cod. One of the first towns we hit (along Rte 6A, which goes along the north coast through little towns) is Sandwich (as in antique Sandwich glass). What a cute little town. Meandering roads with old Cape Cod style bungalows, beautiful old houses... here is the library:

It's much bigger inside, because they built out the back and also down into the basement to make it bigger. It is also beautiful inside. The first area you walk through is the children's area.

Katie played for a half hour and we chatted with the librarians, talking about our trip and about Sandwich. Property taxes are high and school funding is low (per student), but the schools are very good and the prices are a little better than Sacramento. Here are the friendly librarians:

We sat by the mill pond and enjoyed the sunshine:

Then we drove on, to the next little town or so, where we stopped for ice cream at an ice cream place that first opened in the 1800s:

We decided to wander all the way to Provincetown, at the end of the arm of Cape Cod, and see if they have a sign there where US 6 begins (there is a sign in Bishop, near my aunt Jeanne's house at the other end of 6, which says "Provincetown, MA 2,xxx miles." We wanted to see the sign showing how far it is to Bishop, so we kept going and checked out lighthouses on the way. Here are two that were moved back due to erosion (a third is behind me):

And here is the narrowest part of the cape, where if my lens was a fish-eye, you could see both coasts at the same time.

This stop is where Katie's snail escaped. Here is a picture we took not long before, the last record of "katie":

Somehow she jumped from her cup (Katie brought her everywhere) and when we got back to the car, she was gone. Katie was understandably sad, and has been drawing her snail for days since then.

The dunes near Provincetown (probably 15 feet high beside the road):

There was no Bishop sign at the end of 6. Somebody needs to put on in! Here is the first west-bound sign for 6. I took a picture to send to Jeanne:

We tried finding dinner in Provincetown but the only places we found, which were oddly few, were very upscale. I really wanted clam chowder. We headed back along 6 and stopped in a promising-looking town to find there was only one place there, and guess what--it was Mexican night. No chowder to be had.

Katie took this one of us with the new camera, at the restaurant I think:

Friday, May 13

The weather was supposed to be beautiful today and then rain on Saturday and Sunday, so we headed to Boston to explore for today. We took the train to South Station and then walked to Boston Common, the big park in Boston. Katie played at the playground there, and then we walked across the street to the Public Garden, an even prettier park. I'd been told that the Swan Boats were going this time of year and would be nice to do. Here are a few pictures:

the entrance to the Public Garden

the swan boats. The one on the right is 100 years old

the guy in the back pedals to make it go

Katie and I going under a little bridge (Mark was on the bridge). Here is the lake we sailed around:

That is a swan's nest with the mommy swan (Juliet) on it. Romeo wasn't far away, on the water just out of camera range.

Also in the Public Gardens is a bronze sculpture paying homage to an old children's book, "Make Way for Ducklings." There was a kid on every duck. Later we bought the story to remind Katie about the park:

Near the ducks was a park ranger. He let all the kids pet his horse:

At the ducks we met Cindy Pendleton, a nice mom with a toddler on the ducks and a baby in a backpack. She was initially from Maine and talked to us about Camden and stuff to see on our trip. When she left the park, we decided it was time to keep walking. We walked by an old cemetary (established 1640 I think) and checked out the old headstones (including Paul Revere and John Hancock):

The old slate headstones were often in great shape and easy to read. There were lots of flying skulls and angel heads as decoration. Here were a couple I took pictures of. The first one is a dad buried with four of his infant children:

We walked to Fannuel Hall, passing narrow winding roads and sometimes winding buildings. This one is curved along both roads:

After window-shopping and then eating at the big, touristy restaurant Cheers (I had some pretty good Boston baked beans), we headed back home. Here we are on the train:

Saturday, May 14

No rain yet, so Katie and I headed out to look for garage sales, do laundry and get groceries. We found a half dozen sales, and a few cool bargains: I got a 1935 Monopoly game (with a 1946 board) for $1, a newer Monopoly set (for Katie to play with) for $1, a big bag of dominos for $1, then Katie got a bunch of books at another sale for $1, and a new Beany Baby bear for $1. She left her cow at the sale that had the Monopoly sets, but we got back and retrieved him before they had a chance to accidently sell it. whew.

The retired couple holding that sale have been lifetime Plymouth residents who said they'd had it after the harsh storms this last winter. They put their house on the market and found a place in Kissimmee, Florida. They leave next month. Lots of folks have For Sale signs out right now: maybe a lot of people are gambling that the weather might continue to be harsh, what with global warming and stuff. Here they got three feet of snow from one storm, and they were just battered over and over by storms. Makes me think twice before checking the real estate listings, but the houses and the neighborhoods really are charming.

Sunday, May 15

It hasn't rained today either. Mark has been getting some work done, Katie and I ran an errand and have been playing, and I've been working on this site. I've put together a bunch of envelopes of pictures we recently had printed, and we bought some more Duraflames so we can keep having campfires. Maybe Katie and I will go make one right now (it's almost 8pm).

Tomorrow we leave for Maine (Freeport). It'll be my first time in Maine.