Scott & I celebrated 10 years of marriage by going on a trip to Cape Cod over our anniversary week. Lucky for us I had booked (and paid) for this trip last August before Scott was laid-off. We were only responsible for our food and tours-thus more financially feasible.
Of course two days before our departure both Nolan and Leah came down sick. Nolan with a cold and Leah with ? She had a fever of up to 103.8 and threw up once on Thursday night :( But her fever broke Friday night and Nolan was less congested. Chris & Ren were taking care of the kids for the first half of the week we were gone, and my mom watched them for the last half of the week.
We arrived at Boston Logan airport on Saturday at 8:45pm. We took a shuttle to a nearby hotel and had pizza delivered to the room which was a novelty for us "country folk". We do not get food delivered to Rescue. (I take that back, Chris does deliver dinner to us occassionally, as well as grocery delivery)
On Sunday, we took The Freedom Trail tour through Boston with a fantastic guide. Our tour was 1 1/2 hours and began at 11am. We liked it so much, that we decided to book the next tour for the other half of the trail with her at 1:30 too. All told, we walked about 5 hours around Boston between the tour and trying to locate bathrooms etc. on our own. We then drove to the Cape via a scenic route and stopped at the Trader Joe's in the the town 2 miles from our lodging to get breakfast, lunch & snacks.
We checked in to our destination townhouse around 6pm. We arrived at the perfect time as nobody was in line to check-in. Our desk clerk said there had been a line since 3pm that day that had finally ended around 5:30ish. She looked exhausted, but was still friendly enough to give us honest suggestions for dinner locations. We got to our room, unpacked and headed to Captain Parkers for some seafood & chowder. Scott had a beautifal fall bouquet of flowers waiting for me when we arrived to our condo that I was able to enjoy all week.
We took it easy on Monday and relaxed in the condo, as I woke up with head ache :( It was drizzly out so I rested and read and Scott toured the pools and amenities at our location and then worked. (I realized during this trip the possibility of our travelling more with Scott's job and him still being able to work and earn money) We ventured out for dinner at Spanky's Clam Shack that night and I determined that this resturant had better clam chowder than the restaurant the night before. We had a delicious dinner and came back to the condo to watch movies and have dessert.
After a relaxing morning on Tuesday, we ventured out in the still drizzly weather and toured the eastern part of the Cape . We visited the location of the first landing of the Pilgrims and the museum. We also walked up to the top of the Pilgrim Monument-a tower to commemorate the landing that was completed in 1910. The height of the tower is 252' 7.5 ". We walked all 116 stairs and 60 ramps to the top. I was not sure I could make it, but was determined and did make it to the top. I'm sure the view would be phenomenal on a clear day, but alas it was still overcast and foggy. We headed back to our condo after stopping once again at Spanky's to bring home some chowder for dinner.
Wednesday morning we toured the western region of Cape Cod and stopped at the Cape Cod Potato Chip Factory for a self-guided tour. Very interesting & tasty. We drove on a bit further and had lunch in Sancwich, MA. We had received a recommendation from the nearby fish market (where they had at least a hundred live lobsters-wish we'd had a kitchen to cook them up in). This particular recommendation was NOT as good as our hotel concierge's and we both left lunch disappointed for "wasting" money on such a mediocre lunch. But the drive was beautiful and we stopped off at a wine store near our condo to purchase some wine. The shop also carried beer from a brewery in Plymouth, MA.
We arrived back out our condo about 5pm and snacked on bread and cheese while enjoying our newly purchased wine & beer selections. Scott finished up some more work (was very strange for it to be dinner time here & still 2pm back home), while I relaxed and read some more :) Later in the evening we headed to the restuarant located above the lobby where we stayed to enjoy dessert. Prior to our departure for dessert-I gave Scott his anniversary gift early as we would not be in our condo until late Thursday night. It was a photo-video I'd made of our years together so far and we both really enjoyed watching it and were amazed to realize how the kids have aged us :)
Thursday morning Scott worked a bit while I lounged and read some more until lunch. We had lunch at the condo and then headed out to Plymouth, MA. We walked the streets of Plymouth, taking photos of Plymouth Rock (or stepping stone-as the locals call it), a replica of the Mayflower and other highlights in the town of Plymouth. We then headed to tour the brewery where the beer we'd purchased had been made. It was a small brewery with tastings and a tour from some very entertaining college kids. We arrived at 4:30pm (when the brewery opened for tastings/tours) and left at 6pm so we could get dinner before our Plymouth ghost tour. We asked our brewmasters for suggestions and this recommendation was excellent and hailed the BEST chowder our entire trip. I also ordered whole lobster (my first) given that this was our Anniversary dinner and I even left Scott a little taste :)
We then walked over to where we needed to meet our guide for the ghost tour. We had six people on the tour with us and each of us carried a lantern lit by a candle. We headed to the cemetery first and were guided to the tombstones where ghosts were reported to have been seen and paranormal activity had been recorded. We also were guided through the town to several stores, houses and entire streets that were haunted. Needless to say-we did NOT see any ghost or paranormal activity on our tour. It lasted 90 minutes and we had a good time, but this guide was sub-par in comparison to our fantastic Freedom Trail tour guide. We arrived back to the condo late and went directly to bed as we had an early morning departure for Vermont.
Friday we left for Vermont about and hour later than we planned. We drove up through north-west MA and into Vermont to stop at our first Vermont cheddar cheese factory-Grafton Cheese Village. Very quaint-delicious cheese and the factory was working when we arrived so we were able to see some cheese-making in action. We spent at least 30 minutes watching the process, browsed the extensive gift shop, tasted lots of cheese and then made our purchase of three flavors of cheese. We ate cheese, crackers and bread for lunch then blasted to the next one on my list that also had a maple syrup factory.
However, upon our arrival around 3:30, the small farm's proprietor was gone, but had left the gift shop open with a note to write down what we purchased and leave the money on the counter. We toured the small gift shop, tasted a few of the cheeses and peeked into the dairy-cow barn. We spent about 20 minutes there, hoping the proprietor would return, but decided we needed to get under way if we were to make it to the last stop by 5pm. We purchased some Vermont maple syrup and some chipotle cheese and were on our way when Scott received a business call that he had to take care of. By the time we were back on the road and calculated the distance to the next cheese shop, we figured we would not make it before closing, so we took our time and stopped off at a covered bridge for some pictures. We did a drive-by of the Cabot Cheese Factory and headed to our hotel in St. Johnsbury, VT.
We stayed the night in VT, as we had a Fall Folliage train ride in NH at 11am on Saturday. We had a light breakfast in St. Johnsbury and started our drive to NH through the White Mountian region. This whole trip we'd seen the fall colors, but they were more prominent the farther north we travelled and we were probably about 2 weeks too early for the vibrant reds, but saw lots of yellows and oranges with some burgandy and red in between. Beautiful.
We boarded our train at 11am and travelled on the train next next to a lake, river, and ponds for about 1 1/2 hours, with views of the trees changing colors . We had a gentleman playing the accordian and a woman dressed as a Hobo (It was the HOBO railroad) and our conductor on board whom were all VERY entertaining. We then stopped in Plymouth, NH for lunch for an hour then got back on the train to head back. The train was scheduled to be back in the station close to 3pm and at 3:20 the engine of our train was smoking as the leaves had piled on the track and were catching fire and had disable our engine. So...we had to wait for another engine to come and pull us back. We waited an hour and while we waited the employees of the train entertained us-as well as some of our fellow passengers who were making calls to loved ones on their cell phones-playing out that the train had caught fire, de-railed etc.....it was quite amusing and as we had no particular plans except to pack-we were not affected by the delay.
We arrived back at the condo at 7:30pm. We finished any food we had left and packed our bags for our very early departure in the morning as we had a 7am plane to catch in Boston Sunday morning.
We arrived home last night about 5:30ish and are trying to get caught up today before my mom brings the kids home tomorrow. Had a wonderul time and have been planning our trip back in 5 years with the kids for a history field trip. See photos of highlights.
