Grandpa Tom's Visit, Part 1

We have tried to keep my dad busy. He flew into Hartford last Thursday and my brother Jeff picked him up. Dad spent the weekend with Jeff, Shannon, and Socha at their place. Sunday evening, I drove over (about 2 hours west of us) to pick Dad up and bring him back here for the week.

On Monday, the kids had no school (Veteran's Day) so while Jeremy worked the rest of us took Grandpa to see some parts of the Freedom Trail that we hadn't seen before. We all rode the train in from our house. The kids have been on the subway a number of times but have been itching to ride the train all the way in. For this particular trip, it was perfect - walk over to the train station, enjoy the ride, and get dropped directly at North Station, which is about as close to our destination (the U.S.S. Constitution in Charlestown) as we could get.

Who doesn't like a train ride?

We had a gorgeous day - bright and sunny. It was a bit cold, but we kept moving. We left the house at 9:30 and returned at 8:30 that night! Can you see the 3 masts of the U.S.S. Constitution behind us?

This large anchor tells us we are getting close!

All of us aboard the ship.

The U.S.S. Constitution museum is actually a pretty nice children's museum - the kids played there for over an hour when I had to drag them away to the next place. Here, the girls help Grandpa learn to roll the sails. 

Grandpa, I am a monkey!

Next, we walked over to the Bunker Hill Memorial. It should have been about 5-10 minutes away, but our crew of 6 was not moving very quickly. Or perhaps more accurately, the our root-mean-square path was not so quick, though there were all kinds of individual, quickly moving particles in many directions.

As the Park Ranger explained, the battle of Bunker Hill is memorialized not because it was a great victory - the colonial militiamen ran out of ammunition and were routed. However, it is considered to be a significant turning point in the history of our emerging nation, because it gave the rest of the colonies the resolve to toss in their hats with the folks up here in Massachusetts.

We climbed the steps in the tower for the beautiful view over Boston as sunset (4:30 pm!) approached. There are 294 steps in all, so I brought back proof that we made it all the way. 

Actually, even Helen climbed most of the tower. I didn't have to start carrying her on the way up until step 225, and she also walked down for the first 100 steps or so. 

Look at me go!

Beautiful sunset back at the bottom as we looked at the statue.

Tuesday was slower - the kids all went to school, and I did chores at home then took Dad to see the Louisa May Alcott house in Concord. He loved it, and I enjoyed it, too. I had just taken the kids on that tour last week, with the same tour guide, but I learned lots of interesting new things this time so I was glad to go back.