Month: August 2018

We left about 10 am from the campsite at Minuteman Campground. One thing that we didn’t foresee with our air conditioner is that it would cause condensation on the outside of the camper. Since it was very humid outside, we wanted to keep the camper up as long as we could.

Once we got going, Carson realized that he did not have his glasses. He left them, he thought, in the netting above his bed. The poor kid felt so bad and actually gave me his phone and said he didn’t deserve to play in it today.

We made one stop at Jeff Kinney’s bookstore, An Unlikely Story (Jeff Kinney is the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books in case you didn’t know). I, um I mean the boys were hoping to meet him if he was there. Jeff stayed out by the camper to see if he could pop it up a little and find Carson’s glasses. We all had our fingers crossed that the glasses didn’t get squished when the camper went down earlier.

Unfortunately, the bookstore’s AC was out and they had decided to close because it was already near 90 degrees out and very humid.I caught the worker just as she was locking the doors and she graciously said we could do a quick walk through. Jeff Kinney wasn’t there at the time, so we each bought a book and got out of there. I didn’t even have my phone on me so no pictures, but it was a cool children’s bookstore and I would love to go back someday.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Lots of trees and very hilly.

We got to the Kline’s lake house about 4 pm. It is gorgeous and has enough room for all 20 people.

The boys immediately went for a boat ride. Then they went swimming and played with their second cousins that they just met like they have known them forever. 8 kids total, 7 of them are boys. Also 3 of the kids are 12 and 4 of them are 10 and then a seven year old. It’s a hoot listening to them play together.

I was able to go for a tour of the north half of the lake on a boat ride before dinner. I could boat all day long! Love it! There is a dam that holds back the water that forms Lake Wallenpaupack so I had to take a picture of it for Jeff.

As I was leaving the water to go back to the house, this mink crossed my path.

We sang Happy Birthday to Carson and Larry/Grandpa and had “upcakes” (just the top of the cupcake with frosting on the top and sides). Delicious!

Another post with a lot of photos. You have been warned. 😀

We started out by taking the Red Line on the “T” into the city, stopping to change to the Green Line as we got closer. We bought Dunkin Donuts for breakfast to eat on the train. Jeff thankfully got a really nice picture of us eating them.

Also on the way in, we stopped at Harvard to walk around. A beautiful and historic campus! I took most pictures with my real camera, so here are just a couple Jeff or I took with our phones. The news stand at Harvard Square, a gorgeous stone church, and one of many of Harvard’s libraries. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go into this library unless we had a student ID.

Then we stopped at Boston Common to begin our journey on the Freedom Trail. If you haven’t been there, the Freedom Trail connects all the landmarks about the beginnings of the Revolutionary War with a brick path down the center of the sidewalk. You stop along the way and learn about where the colonial patriots met, what they did in the lead up to the war.

We saw the cemetery where Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and many other patriots were buried. There is a tradition of putting pennies on the gravestones as a mark of honor. It was inspired by the Schindler’s List movie, but coins are used instead of stones as a nod to Paul Revere’s job working with metals (he was a silversmith and worked with copper).

I learned this because as we walked, we passed tour groups and listened in (the kids aren’t patient enough yet to go at the pace of a tour group and listen to detailed lectures). Next time we come through here, we will delve deeper into the stories that the tour guides tell.

Here are a few of the sites we stopped at: The site of the first school, many statues of founding fathers (what were all the women doing at this time and why aren’t we hearing more about them?), Paul Revere’s house, Old North Church.

We also stopped in an alley on the Trail that had an awesome used and rare book store. One book was over 500 years old and had pages made from vellum. So cool!

We ate lunch at Quincy Market and watched some fun street performers.

We finally found someone with feet bigger than Jeff’s too!

By the time we got down to Copp’s Hill Cemetery, it was raining so we decided not to head over the river to the Bunker Hill site. We started searching for the T and got a little lost and ended up walking through the Boston Celtics/Boston Bruins Arena.

We found the Correct T line and made a quick stop at Cambridge so Jeff could pick up his order at the Amazon Lockers there. The boys keep wanting me to take photos of the pigeons everywhere we go, so here’s the obligatory pigeon photo.

Our next stop was at Lexington and Concord to see the battlegrounds of the first shots and battle of the Revolutionary War. Jeff and I were fascinated and the kids thought, “Cool!” And then ran around or talked video game strategies. We walked through Lexington Green where the British killed the first 3 Minuteman.

We checked in at Minuteman National Park visitor center and then walked to the Old North Bridge where the first battle happened. We talked to a National Park volunteer who was a great storyteller and made the history come alive.

Finally, we bought some food on the way back to the camper and made our way back. Someone had left us some “trail magic” and had even prepare it all for us so all we had to do was light it. If it wasn’t for the monster-sized vampire mosquitos, we could have stayed out by the fire all night! So we enjoyed our gift and then headed to bed in our nice air-conditioned camper early.

Next up, a stop at Jeff Kinney’s (author of the Wimpy Kid books) bookstore, and then on to the Kline Family reunion in the Poconos!