Day 1 Boston

Summer adventure 2014 is underway! We left Mississauga at 8:00 yesterday and drove through the longest storm that we have ever experienced! The rain was torrential, the lightning severe and the whole experience went on for five hours non-stop! The only thing we can assume is that we were traveling with the line of the storm. David was a hero so there were no serious troubles but we were delayed significantly. 11 hours after leaving home we arrived at Wompatuk State Park on the outskirts of Boston. The park is lovely and huge! A fairly modest camping area with very private sites but the park itself is over 3,500 acres and I already have a sneaky suspicion that five days here won’t be long enough with Nantasket Beach bordering the Atlantic, 70 miles of hiking trails, the pretty, pretty town of Hingham that we drove through to enter the park, and of course Boston, all beckoning for our attention!

This morning was a bit of a peaceful start. After 11 hours in the truck yesterday we lingered over a second cup at our beautiful site. Last night we watched as hundreds of fireflies danced magically through the surrounding woods. This morning as the sun slants through the trees it’s tough to pull ourselves away!

 

The view from the big back window in our RV!

 

When we finally did start the truck to head into Boston we noticed the engine light was on! Not necessarily a great start to the day but given the trip we’ve planned we can’t afford to ignore it. Thankfully our good friends Colin and Michelle set us up with a Verizon internet connection before we left home so a quick search led us to a Ford garage very near where we were headed. Car repairs on the road leave you at the mercy of whomever you happen to pick so we thought the dealership might be safest. What a great choice. On hearing our tale the young service manage bemoaned that he didn’t have enough room in the schedule today to fit an oil change but offered to personally take a quick diagnostic look to see if he could determine if it was something serious or we could be on our way and come back when there was more time. Connecting his cell phone to our engine (gotta love technology) he quickly referenced codes that apparently meant that the engine wasn’t getting enough oxygen. While he sent David out to parts to buy a filter he and I had a grand chat about July 4^th, hurricanes, vacations, camping...David was back (having discovered the parts guy’s wife was from the Bay of Fundy) and the manager replaced the filter, cleared the codes and we were on our way with him refusing payment. Honestly these kinds of things always happen to us when we travel – unbelievable!

Before we left home Jonathan and Jenna gave us two T-passes. “T” is how Bostonians refer to their subway/transportation system and yet again we discovered another unban centre where all areas, including the suburbs, are connected by an economical, efficient and convenient transit system. The man working in the subway station where we began was helpful and pleasant. He provided us with directions and maps and we were downtown in no time. We decided we wanted the Beantown Trolley Tour to help us situate ourselves. And 40° heat is not conducive to wandering. I knew it started down by the water somewhere so in coming up from the subway I surprised even me, by instinctively heading straight for the ocean! Seeing one of the trolleys parked, I went up to ask the driver directions to their main stop where we could purchase tickets. Claiming it was too hot to walk that far he put away the lunch he was eating and invited us to hop aboard and he would take us there! Unbelievable! Arriving at the kiosk we discovered that due to the approaching hurricane the trolleys would stop running mid-afternoon. That really wouldn’t give us time for the hop-on hop-off option so the girl was happy to issue us tickets for an overview tour for today and write on them access for Saturday when we could come back to stop and wander. Sold! The tour was amazing (as we have discovered Greyline is in so many places – highly recommended!) and by the end we had a very good sense of how to get around Boston.

Following our tour we headed to Quincy Market but were waylaid by The Black Rose. If the sign out front offering fresh lobster wasn’t enough, and the cool air-conditioned interior didn’t secure it, the pints of Guinness that flowed, sealed the deal. We took a marvelous lunch break listening to live music. We wandered through Quincy Market, made dinner reservations at Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in America, for David’s birthday, visited the Holocaust memorial park and stopped in Boston Common to talk a break before heading back out of the city to pick up our truck and head home.

 

At one time sign's in Boston were actually symbols of what was sold inside. This golden tea cup, at one time, graced a Boston tea shop. The shop has long since gone but the sign was relocated to a downtown Starbucks!

 

Holocaust Memorial Park is a beautiful treed walkway with six (six main death camps, six years) 60-70 foot glass towers. It was created by Holocaust survivors who created a new life in New England. The glass cubes have two layers of glass. On the inside are quotes and inscriptions from holocaust survivors. On the outside layer are etched six million numbers that were tatooed on the Jews by the Nazi's. They are lit from inside so they glow at night and at the bottom of each, along the path you walk, is a grate. Charred embers littered with tiny lights sends wisps fo smoke rising through the towers reminding us of the horrors of extermination. As you enter the park the word REMEMBER is written in the stones in both English and Hebrew. Visitors often leave stones at the site, reflecting the age-old Jewish custom of marking graveside visits. What an incredible tribute!

 

From inside the tower looking out through the etching.

 

The Granary, an old burial site in the centre of Boston marks the final resting place of the victims of the Boston Massacre, the parents of Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Sam Adams and Paul Revere (who lived to be 84 by the way!). The grave markers were very simple as you can see from this example marking Sam Adams grave.

On the way home we decided to drive via Nantasket for a sunset walk on the beach. A beautiful spit of land stretching out in the Atlantic toward Boston, the beach goes on for miles. Even so late in the day loads of folks were enjoying a last few minutes of play. By the time we arrived back at the park the fireflies had once again begun their nightly dance through the trees surrounding the trailer. Day is done and all is right with the world...at least until tomorrow when Hurricane Albert may deliver some excitement!