Boston

For our family vacation this year we went to Boston.  We had a wonderful time.  Here is our travelogue.

 

Everyone walking to the airport.  It is so nice everyone is big enough to wheel their own suitcase!

Day 1 Freedom Trail (red line)
Downtown Boston  We parked our car and walked the freedom trail.  It happened to be record breaking heat, and we discovered they kept everything just as it was when it was built, no air conditioning.

Everyone ready for our walking tour.  Our tour guide was Abigail Whitney from the 18th Century

Old State House

Other side of the Old State House

Abigail with her lobster hat

Getting ready to ride a ferry to North end

The USS Constitution Museum

The USS Constitution

Tyson in front of one of the cannons on the USS Constitution

Justin steering the ship

 We walked to a Science museum.  It was quite a walk at the end of a hot day.  Ryan and Abigail didn't know if they would make it, but we all had a fun time inside of it.  We went to a lightning show which was interesting.  Ryan and Abigail still talk about it when ever we get stormy weather.  I think the nicest thing about this modern science museum was the fact that it did have air conditioning.

Day 2  Harbor Islands, Paul Reveres House, North Church, and a Boston Red Sox game
We went to Spectacle Island first.  The younger kids were able to play in the ocean while Emily, Tyson, and Jeff took Kayaking lessons.

Practicing before actually getting in the water

View of Boston from the top of Spectacle Island

The Aquarium workers had set a trap in the harbor to see what they could catch.  This is what they found.

 Next stop was Georges Island.  We got to explore Fort Warren.  It was used for different things during different wars.

We had to cut our visit short because a big storm was rolling in quickly and they didn't want people on the islands during it.

It started pouring rain while we were on the Ferry.  We were glad to be inside, not everyone on the Ferry was so lucky.

When the rain stopped we headed to Paul Reveres home.

Statue of Paul Revere in front of the North Church.  It started to rain again so we didn't get any more pictures.

This is a family pew inside the church

 After walking through the rain we bought some Boston Red Sox clothes and headed to the game.

Day 3 Plymouth and Cape Cod
We headed to Plymouth and saw the Mayflower and Plymouth Plantation.  Plymouth is a beautiful city and the plantation was so interesting. 

This is a picture of a house there.  They were all so beautiful.

On the Mayflower II

The actual Plymouth Rock  It was not quite what we expected.

Tyson ate seafood at every restaurant.  This was probably his most adventurous meals

Plymouth Plantation is where you get to go and experience life how it was back then.  Everyone is dressed up in period clothing and they are doing the daily chores etc. that they would be doing.  You are free to ask them any questions and they will answer them as if they were from that time.  We all learned so much!

We ended this day with a drive out to Cape Cod.

The Sea shell castle they built

Day 4 Salem
We drove out to Salem where we got to learn a lot about the witch trials that took place there.  At the end of the day we participated in a witch trial

These were the girls who claimed to be overpowered by witches

We also toured a pirates ship and learned about the pirates in the area

Letting everyone in town know that a hearing is about to begin

The girl accused of being a witch

Day 5 Lexington and Concord
It was beautiful here.  The weather was wonderful and there were not a lot of people so the kids got to experience a lot.  Jeff was sick in the morning, so he didn't get to enjoy it as much as he would have liked to.

We got to pretend we were minute men and do mustard training

Posing with the hats they all made

We got to see a minute man shooting a musket

The kids didn't dare stand by the "regular" for a picture

Ryan and Abigail received their Jr. Ranger Badges while at this National Park

 We rented canoes and went up the river to the North Bridge

Ryan and Tyson

Jeff, Abigail, and Nicole

Emily and Justin

 Day 6 Sharon, Vermont
Since it was Sunday we decided to drive to Joseph Smith's birthplace.  They had a 30 1/2 foot (a foot for every year of his life) memorial there.  It was so interesting learning about this beautiful area.  We loved talking with the missionaries and hearing the stories they had to tell.

The sun always shines off of the top of this if you stand in the right place

 We weren't too far away from the Ben and Jerry's factory so we drove there and did a tour before leaving Vermont.  It really wasn't very interesting since the factory wasn't actually running on Sunday.

Day 7 The Hall at Patriots Place and Home
Tyson really wanted to go see The hall at Patriots Place so we went there on our way back to the airport.  It was actually very interesting and entertaining, we all agreed it would have been really cool if it was for a team we actually liked.

We had to have a Dunkin' Donut before we left because they are everywhere in Massachusetts.

The pilot of the airplane home was LDS and saw one of our kids BYU things and asked if we were LDS.  He let Ryan and Abby come sit in the pilot seat of the plane before we left.