To New England and Beyond: Part One

Last month, we took a multi-purpose trip involving business, education, pleasure, and nuptials. I have mixed feelings about multi-purpose travel: on one hand, you take care of business in one fell swoop. On the other hand, it turns out to be quite the swoop.

We wanted to get the bulk of the driving over with early on, so on the first day of our trip, we dragged ourselves out of bed at a time when the civilized world is sleeping, and drove straight through to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Along the way, we waved at cities like New York City and states like Rhode Island. As part of a plan to show the kids several New England colleges in hopes that this would promote better study habits for the 2017/2018 school year and life goals that don’t involve video games, Yale University became our first collegiate stop. In retrospect, college tours after I-don’t-know-how-many hours of driving may not be a best practice. Yale was impressive, but at this point in the day, it was all but lost on the kids.

We also stopped at this lilac-colored house, not because we have a thing for pastel domiciles and not because it’s a landmark by any official standards, but because it happens to be the parsonage I lived out all the drama of the first three-plus years of my life, including the scary babysitter episode, the uncles-bring-bags-of-candy-when-they-visit revelation, and the stuck-between-bed-and-wall incident involving a much younger, smaller me.

The next morning, we headed to Plymouth to check out Plymouth Rock.

I love the town of Plymouth; I could have walked there all day, especially after the previous day spent almost entirely in the car.

They were working on the actual rock while we were there, but we were still able to see it. We weren’t able to see the replica of the Mayflower ship, however, as it had been temporarily removed for restoration.

That afternoon, we drove up into Maine, stopped briefly in Portland,

and then headed to Conway, New Hampshire. Conway has preserved several of its covered bridges;

some you can still drive through,

while others are walking access only.

Our hotel was great for the kids. They had cookies waiting for us at check-in, and they had mini-golf, disc golf, shuffleboard, and pools available right outside the door.

Our room had a patio right outside where we could enjoy our morning coffee while the kids played shuffleboard. This lasted so long LCB and began contemplating whether we might be able to get away with dumping all our gaming devices if we just installed a shuffleboard court at home.

Late that morning, we left and headed for Vermont. On the way, we stopped and hiked at a park we found.

During our hike, we went briefly off-trail and discovered three solitary gravestones in the middle of the woods with nothing else around them. There’s a story there somewhere, I’m sure.

Later, we managed an impromptu stop at the Cabot factory, located in Cabot, Vermont, where we sampled cheese and bought more for the road.

My son had an eye for dilapidated buildings on this trip, and found this one on our way out of Cabot.

We pulled into Stowe, Vermont late afternoon. While we loved the town and found a great restaurant for dinner, it would perhaps be best if I don’t talk about the hotel we stayed at, as it felt like the type of place where the line “I see dead people” from The Sixth Sense would seem in keeping with the character of the hotel.

This is what I’m not talking about.

What I will talk about, however, in my next post, is what we did when we headed back to Massachusetts.