While Heather's on a plane...

After several days of packing, sorting, mailing, and foisting Heather's posessions off on various roommates, we finally headed off to Logan Airport this morning. ("Morning" is used in the technical sense... 3 am doesn't feel like morning!) After she checked bags and headed for security, I had a good portion of the day left in Boston with a rental car. So I decided to head off to the Concord/Lexington area. I've never been there before but have often intended to.

First I needed to find a gas station. I tried to use my GPS but had a really hard time navigating in Boston with it. There are so many layers of roads, overpasses and tunnels that it all looks like spaghetti on the screen! Anyway, I did manage to find a station before I actually ran out of gas . It wasn't the one my GPS intended me to find, but as a bonus there was a Starbucks next door!

By the way, I didn't have any trouble with traffic in Boston-- I don't know what everyone complains about! (Ok, so maybe it WAS 6 am on a Saturday morning...)

So with my Caramel Macchiato in hand I headed to Walden Pond! I sipped my coffee beside the peaceful, morning-misty pond with only the birds and a couple fisherman around. I spent about an hour strolling all the way around the pond and checked out the site of Thoreau's cabin. It is nice and pretty and peaceful but not in any way remote! There's traffic noise, airplanes flying over and a train going by periodically near the site of the cabin. Apparently that train was there when Thoreau lived there as well! He would walk about a half hour along the tracks into town to visit his parents most days.

Then I headed off to Concord and Lexington, where the first battles of the Revolutionary War were fought. Both towns are typical New England towns, with Colonial houses, a picturesque downtown with a small common and a bandstand. There was a plant sale going on in Concord with some tempting offerings, but yeah, how would I get them home? There was a little cemetery nearby that I poked around in a bit. Most of the headstones actually predated the Revolutionary War! Most of them were engraved with the winged death head familiar from the old Puritan graveyards in Boston.

I headed toward Lexington through the Minuteman National Historic Park. The visitor center had a really great multimedia show describing the events in detail about the battle that took place along the road from Boston to Concord and back again. Then I headed back out to actually see some of those sites. As I was pulling off the road to stop at the site where Paul Revere was captured by the British while on his "Midnight Ride", the radio station on my car radio randomly played "Stars and Stripes Forever"!! Awesome...

The flight home was extremely uneventful and I spent all day Sunday being LAZY!!! Now I'm off to plant some flowers that I bought before heading to Massachusetts.