My friend, Chris  had contacted me on facebook when she saw we were getting close to Massachusetts and invited us to come to her place!  We had a great time and finally met her boyfriend, Bill.  They also had company from Tacoma, WA ironically, Jeff and Katy!  We enjoyed conversation about the sea and their exciting jobs in that profession. Bill treated us all to a wonderful dinner out and John got his taste of Cape Cod where they live with a bowl of Clam Chowder!

It’s been great meeting friends on our travels who have since moved to other parts of the country!

A girl has to look good, right?   After a few months on the road I was looking a little shabby!  We walked by Sage Salon in Franklin, MA and John suggested I dip in to see if I could get an appointment.  Everyone was so helpful and I explained to Steph how I wanted to spice life up a little bit with some blue highlights.  She was able to get me in the next day and I walked out of there feeling like a new woman.  She was so fun and I loved talking to her! She has a spicy personality 🙂 Thank  you so much Steph, you got my mojo going again after so many months of being on the road!

We are in awe as we ride the tour bus around Boston, scoping out the places we want to stop and visit.  We finally decide on a stop near the Boston Common and walk through history.  We have a laugh at what fate brought us.  Some of you may recognize the statue from our previous pictures of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site,  it greeted us literally as we stepped off the bus:

We walk along the Freedom Trail stopping at the Ganary Burying Ground and then the King’s Chapel.  Sitting in the pews purchased by the wealthy, we wonder what it must of been like to live in Boston in the pre-revolutionary war years.

As the Freedom Trail winds through the city we find the site of the Boston Massacre, one of the defining moments that stirred the embers of the revolutionary spirit into a flame that has never died.   The Massachusetts  people and government along with the National Park Service have preserved so much of what shaped our history and we are truly grateful.

We loved learning more about the history of our young nation and were excited to head out to Lexington and Concord next where the first shots were fired.

My friend Dennis met us at the Minute Man National Historic Site for lunch and a visit to the park.  It was great seeing him after all these years 🙂

What can you say to the thought of standing armed with a musket, in a line with your fellow revolutionaries, to stop the British from capturing your leaders and confiscating your weapons?  This goes beyond courage, to believe so strongly in the idea of freedom !

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You wake up to rain hitting the RV trailer roof in early October and open the door to a chill in the air,  camped close to Acadia National Park, what do you do?  Well we sipped some coffee to get warmed up with the rush of hot air from the heating vents, ate a small breakfast and drove down the road to explore Acadia 🙂

The park loop road was the first destination, miles of rocky ocean shore, a grey sky and yet an intense beauty that lights your soul to witness the scene.  You can enjoy these shores away from the Columbus day crowds if you choose your explorations carefully.

Rain still requires the windshield wipers by midday, but the colors of autumn create the glow to light the grey skies.

Finally making it to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, but I didn’t do the necessary research on the best way to photograph it.  Next time I will hike down to the shore and take an image.  The shot below was the best I could get from the “tourist” walk to the lighthouse.

Driving home was as fun as the drive down with stops everywhere to look at the fall foliage contrasted with the grey clouds and rain.  Here is one last hedge of color that we saw in a small town.

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I have always considered Mt. Shasta in northern California to be “God’s country”.  I have to say Acadia in Maine is a close second.  The picture above is a stunning example of the scenery that scatters the entire National Park.  There is so much history here and has been around as a national park since 1916.  Just last month 14 acres were donated by a local family and it has had sporadic donations like that for years.  I mentioned to John after hearing this information, “What kind of ‘unselfish’  do you have to be to give up 14 acres of this?”  Right?  Needless to say we are all grateful!  I encourage everyone to make your way here at some time in your life!  Sometimes people say they feel so small when being in moments like this but I don’t.  On the contrary I feel like I am on top of the world and anything is possible.

We had a long first day  in Acadia and John took many pictures.  In my continuing support of John being able to taste local cuisine, we decided to get him some lobster!  We found this funky little dive called C-Ray’s Lobster and Clams. There wasn’t even an inside dining area. Pictured above are Di and Guy which is how she introduced them and they were in Maine from Windsor, Canada!  They were a pleasure to speak with and shared the same interest in traveling as we do.  They also plan on doing something like we are so I wish them the best of luck in that and hope it happens soon for them.  Note the feast in front of them! 🙂

John and I love a good boat or train ride so to keep in tradition with that we jumped on a schooner and sailed out into Frenchman Bay. Porpoise and seal were spotted and there was a park ranger on board to to tell the history of Acadia and answer questions! Watching the sails go up and down and sailing around the bay was a wonderful change from the driving we are so used too.

Once again do what you have to do to travel somewhere gand if you can I suggest Acadia!  John has more to blog on about Acadia and his travels around the area when I was sick so stay tuned.  Also we really do appreciate you reading our blog.  Say something! Anything!

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First with the facts!   This cog railroad is the first climbing railroad in the world with an average grade of  25% and a maximum of 37.41%  making it the second steepest in the world!  It uses a Marsh rack system named after the man who dreamnt it and created it, Sylvester Marsh. The railroad stops just short of the mountain’s peak at 6,266 feet.

I felt giddy like a little kid waiting to board the train and after finding our seat and patiently waiting we soon began our trek up Mt. Washington.  The autumn colors were vibrant and as John put it, looked “like bursts of flames coming up out of the forest”.  As we climbed higher the clouds were soon lower than us and it made for a surreal view that I was in awe of!  It was a very exciting trip for us and one of those flukes that we just came across.  It seems some of our best experiences have been those we didn’t plan.

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For your next vacation, take a trip up to northern New Hampshire around Columbus Day.  Take 16 north from Gorham along the Androscoggin River, never hesitating to follow the dirt roads along the river 🙂

As you enter Errol, head to L.L.Cote Sports Center, a treasure trove for anybody who likes the outdoors 🙂   After emptying your wallet, head west on 26, driving up over Dixville Notch.

By the time we were heading south on Hwy 3 exhaustion had set in.  Roni had backed up, turned around, driven dirt roads till we were lost, all at my behest to get that special picture, lol.  The loop takes a long time when you stop every few hundred yards and head up every dirt road to see where it leads.

Our last stop was a covered bridge in Stark.  It had been a long day, but it is hard to pass up a covered bridge 🙂

Thank you for reading our blog.  As we travel around America on our Precious Venture, any suggestions you have on places to visit or comments on what we saw, please post a comment 🙂

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We choose Shelburne NH as our base of operations to visit the fall colors of New Hampshire and it was spectacular 🙂  This loop went east to Gilead, south to Fryeburg, then west and north to Glen and back home.

The road at first drove through parts of Maine, becoming primitive at points, but lovely always.

You start to climb up to a pass, Evan’s Notch with lovely views of the cliffs above.

To be honest, as we drove this loop, we were just in awe of the beauty, one wonderful view after another, feeling guilty for the over abundance, stopping often to breathe the crisp air and let our eyes slowly scan the colors.

Sometimes you could tell a nice area was coming up by the photographer who had parked there and other times you just had to drive slow to see what was around the next corner.

Glen Ellis Falls pretty much capped the drive like a cherry on an ice cream sundae 🙂

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A bit down the road and across the border in New Hampshire, our second unique National Park Service historic site awaited us.  Located on a quiet country road near Cornish, Augustus Saint-Gaudens spent his summers and eventually year round,  as one of America’s greatest sculptors.

An Art Colony formed in Cornish bringing together many artists to live in this community that Saint-Gaudens stimulated.  His works are in London, New York, Boston, Chicago and many other places.  Most of us have probably seen some of them without realizing the artist that created them.  Below is one of his works, Standing Lincoln, that stands in Chicago’s Lincoln Park as well as Springfield, Illinois and in London facing Parliament Square.

His first commissioned work was the Civil War Admiral David Farragut and it is on display in New York’s Madison Square.

We wandered the grounds rich with versions of his works on a crisp autumn day, walking through his personal studio as well as a larger one where his team worked with him to produce the large sculptures.  The National Park Service had a ranger give our group a tour of his home called Aspet for the town his father grew up in France.  Don’t you think we should all have names for our homes???  🙂

We were drawn by the dirt road leading on past his home and explored the countryside, ending back at the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge.

We just loved the warning sign atop the entrance of the bridge.

In summary, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site was a surprise, captivating us in the beauty and power he created in his sculptures and wondering how the National Park Service figured out that art and culture are just as important as natural beauty and history, when building landmarks for America to admire 🙂

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The National Park Service has set up parks, monuments, memorials, etc all across our fair land.  So far our trip has focused on historically significant parks or ones with exceptional natural beauty.  Now we arrive in Vermont and New Hampshire and find parks dedicated to cultural ideas and art.

Vermont has the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park near Woodstock VT.  A home is nestled in the lovely hills with a functioning farm and an award winning sustainable forest surrounding it.  Three families owned the home at different times, and all shared an ideal that helped America move from the Industrial Age to one with eyes more open to conservation, sustainability, and the protection of our countries’ natural resources.

You must go on a guided tour of the home to appreciate the significance of the National Historic Park and understand the linkage of the three families to the ideals of conservation.  Well, we did at least since reading books on the subject would have proved to be too daunting 🙂

This National Historic Park touched our souls with the significance of the efforts by so many people, these three families included, to make America not just great, but beautiful, by preserving what we have and restoring what we have lost.

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Travel to the center of Vermont and celebrate Autumn 🙂  Our first stop was the Quechee Gorge, pronounced kwee-chee, I think it means jaw dropping lovely 🙂

Further down the road is the Taftsville covered bridge, kept in fine order, and as we discovered the portal to a wonderful dirt road that travels west from there.

The fall colors starting to show by the riverbanks on the remarkably smooth dirt road, packed down like clay.  Around the bend we find a small cemetery with a lovely view of the pastures, filled with many of the early Slate gravestones.

The earliest one we found was recording a death in 1799.  The small cemetery with the autumn leaves strewn about and the cows grazing in the fields nearby, there was a palpable peace in the air as we respectfully walked the grave markers.   We were in awe of how far back in time these people were buried and wondered about their lives in this area, what was it like?

We drove further to explore the trendy town of Woodstock, many people walking the sidewalks in the late afternoon hours, enjoying the decorations celebrating the start of Fall.

In the next post we explore the two National Park Services sites nearby.  Thank you for following our blog 🙂

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