Beyond Boston

We started out our day with plans to go to Boston and Salem.  I'm not a huge city person.  Dragging the summer campers I used to work with into DC every summer cured me of that.  Still, we're in MA, so off to Boston, right?  We didn't have a list of things to see or do, parking turned out to be complicated, I didn't want to be there, so we honestly just drove through the city and kept on going to Salem.  Sorry, Boston!  The buildings are beautiful, but that's all I know about the city.  

Salem, much like Plymouth, took us very little time to explore.  We could have done more, seen more gimmicky sights and such, but we were good with about an hour.  This is the Witch House, the only remaining building with any connection to the Salem Witch Trials.  We stopped by the regional visitor's center, did the Heritage Trail, and made sure we got some pics.  I picked up a book on the Salem Witch Trials, which K already knew were a horrible time in our history, but she learned quite a bit with the new book, even more horrible things.              

Nathaniel Hawthorne was also from Salem, so we walked by the House of the Seven Gables.  They've got quite the tour set up for it, but we opted just for walking by it.  I'm going to have to read that one sometime, as The Scarlet Letter is his book I've read.                                      

A lot of the things we wanted to do or see were closed for renovations.  This martime historic site has no ship right now.  It's in dry dock, getting some upkeep.  The Constitution (in Boston) was away being cleaned up.  Seemed like it was all closed.  But we did still have fun walking around and such.                                    

After Salem, we were headed to Concord.  Except that the Saugus Ironworks sign beckoned us from the highway, and so we went to check that out.  G loves this stuff, and there were very few people there, so the Ranger showed us things that not everyone gets to see.  Yeah!  There was a brief film on the history of iron works, with the Puritans leading the way.  Their blast oven only ran for 20+ years, but it lead the way for US made iron.  It was a nifty history tour.  We spent a little more than an hour at this site, too, but we learned quite a bit more.              

We finished up our day at the Minute Man National Historic Site.  It's a small park, but their 25 minute film was excellent.  They used maps, three different walls, and several screens to help show us all the beginnings of the Revolutionary War.  NPS films vary in quality, but this was possibly the best one we've seen.  Definitely worth the stop.