Since we had arrived at dusk last night, I had promised the
girls we would make another trip out to see the beach this morning. Originally, my plan was to go out to see the
sunrise—however, a rain shower moving through in the early morning hours
thwarted that plan. The rain moved
through quickly, though, and the girls were still able to get another walk in
on the beach while Michael took an 8 mile run along a nearby canal.
The beach is very different here than what we are used
to. The sand is very coarse and as I
mentioned in the previous blog post, it is full of rocks. We did spy about 5 seashells during our walk
but they are few and far between. The
tide was high and there were several fishermen.
We made some interesting discoveries on our walk. If anyone can identify what kind of animal
these bones came from, we would love to know!
For reference, it ‘looks’ sort of like a hand, but the entire thing was
about 18 inches long—WAY bigger than a
human hand. We couldn’t figure out what
sort of sea creature would have finger like bones.
The seagulls were out in force this morning…and they come in
different color varieties and are much larger than southern seagulls. We enjoyed watching them.
After checking out from Scusset Beach (which I found out was
pronounced “sCUSSet” not “sCOOOset”—oops!), we drove over to Flax Pond Farms in
the nearby town of Carver. This is a
family owned cranberry bog that produces cranberries for Ocean Spray. They have vines that are over 100 years old. Did you know that cranberries are one of only
3 native fruits to North America (according to the lady who gave our tour)? Can you name the other two?
This was super interesting.
She explained the entire growing and harvesting process to us. They are a dry harvest operation—which means
that their berries are the ones that you would buy bagged up at
Thanksgiving. The wet harvested crops
(like in the Ocean Spray commercials) are used for juice. We made a few cranberry purchases at their
gift shop and were on the road once again.
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| Flat Grandma and PawPaw at Plymouth Rock" |
The next stop was also a short drive away—the town of Plymouth. Home of the landing site of the
Pilgrims. And a famous rock. Which may or may not be the actual rock (I’m
going with probably not since it was identified over 100 years after their
landing!). Actual or not, it’s a
symbolic area and we were close by, so a stop was in order. We found free RV parking on the waterfront
(woohoo!!) and walked down to the Pilgrim Memorial park—where we got a look not
only at the rock but at the Mayflower II—a replica of the original Mayflower
that actually recreated the Pilgrim’s voyage back in 1957. A quick stop for some local cupcakes (we have
run out of TV bakeries but are perfectly willing to try local ones!) and we
were off again for points north.
Our plan had originally called for a stop at Minute Man
National Park in Concord—but unfortunately that was not to be—so we decided to
take the direct route through Boston in order to save time. I had not researched this route because we
had planned to take a western bypass around Boston to get to Concord. Well.
Apparently this route utilizes several tunnels. Which may or may not be permissible for RV’s
to use. The jury is still out on
this. Regardless, we drove through the
Big Dig tunnel as we really had no other option once we realized our
predicament. It’s not like you can just
turn around on a dime when you are in an RV on a major interstate!! We avoided blue lights chasing us down so we
are counting that as a blessing J We made a quick stop for gas on the north
side of Boston because prices seem as though they are going up from here.
I had one more stop that I really wanted to make today—the Portland
Head Lighthouse. We realized we weren’t going
to make it in time to go up the light (again—silly Internet—you told me they
closed at 6, not 4!!) but that we might be able to make it into the park to see
the light before the park closed at sunset.
Thanks to some stellar driving by Michael, we breezed into the park
(along with dozens of other people) in time to see it and take some pictures. They had an automated announcement that the
park would close in 15 minutes… and 10 minutes later, people were still arriving! Apparently, sunset is a very nebulous closing
time! Oh, I forgot to mention that the
minute we stepped out of the RV, we realized we were finally in the North. It is COLD!!!
Pull out the jackets and jeans!!!
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| Mom- is this the one we visited when I was 2? |
Our final destination of the evening was the parking lot of
LL Bean’s Flagship Store in Freeport, Maine.
I had read online that since this store is open 24-7, they allow
overnight parking in their lots. Well.
We arrived and drove into parking lot after parking lot (this place is HUGE!)
and not only did they say “No Overnight Parking” but also “No RV Parking”!! Umm… okay… I can understand revoking
overnight parking but now you don’t even want us to shop???!! Seemed strange. So we pulled into a “No RV Parking” lot
anyway (we are rebels!)—because where else were we supposed to go?! And researched a little more. Apparently there IS a designated RV lot where
you CAN park overnight—it just wasn’t the ones by the store. Whew!!
The town of Freeport is DARLING. It is like a factory outlet mall but all the
stores are in quaint little buildings.
We had a quick dinner, did a little window shopping and browsed through
the main LL Bean store (it’s a little bit like a 3 story Bass Pro Shops)… and
then headed back to the RV… where we bundled up in long pj’s and blankets and
tried to stay warm!
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