Highlights & Independence Day

As you know, we have had a visitor so I haven’t been blogging very regularly.  After she'd been here about a week, her parents and grandma surprised her by ringing our doorbell one night! Surprise! Whew! I can’t believe we all kept that secret for all the months of planning it! But surprised she was! What fun!

Here are a few pictures highlighting what we all did together:

We toured the Canterbury Shaker Village.

For many of us, the most fun we had was when we went “barning”. Yes, “barning” is a new verb we invented. It is defined as: wandering around the countryside, knocking on the doors of complete strangers, requesting permission to look at, walk into, gawk, photograph, and generally admire their barn. Oh my! What fun! We went in barns that were 250+ years old! This one, in our town, was built about 1840.

To celebrate our guest's birthday, we went to dinner at an historic inn. Delicious!

We spent a day at a lake. Beautiful! Crystal clear, warm water! Lots of fun kayaking!

We toured Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. We had just toured this home, Old Manse, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s house.

Sadly, our guest's parents had to return home. Not nearly a long enough visit! But her grandma and I had a blast bopping around New England! We went to my favorite used book store and then to The Vermont Country Store.

And then came the 4th of July! What an experience! We drove into Boston to celebrate the 4th on the Esplanade (a narrow grassy strip along the Charles River) where the Boston Pops concert is projected over speakers to the hundreds of thousands gathered to hear and to watch the fireworks show. See how tranquil the Charles River looks.

Then looking just to the right of that scene, you see the mass of humanity staking out their viewing spots for the fireworks show. We’re not particularly fond of large crowd events, so we figured this is one of those “we’ve done it once in our lifetime”-sort of events.

We found a good viewing spot and planted ourselves for the afternoon and evening. We met other friends there as well! We all had a nice picnic dinner together. It got dark. We chatted and listened to the concert. Then there was a rumble of thunder and a little lightning. Then some more thunder and lightning. No rain. Then the music stopped and an announcement was made to evacuate due to threat of lightning strikes…hundreds of thousands of us. Groan. We packed up and moved (like a herd) just outside the area. After about 40 minutes, we were allowed back in. We spread out our quilt and opened our chairs, took our seats, and resumed listening to the concert. Then the fireworks began! Amazing! Then I felt a raindrop. And another. And another! Then the rain started coming down in sheets! By the time I had passed out three umbrellas, I was soaked to the skin! You could’ve wrung out my clothes. But we, and the hundreds of thousands of others, were undeterred! We enjoyed the fireworks show just the same! And after a few minutes, the rain stopped, the umbrellas went down, and we all stood amazed at the most amazing fireworks show ever!

The next day, we spent a quieter day at Old Sturbridge Village.

Then my friend went home. We miss her! But we still have our original guest here in New England for a few more weeks! She’s not staying with us the whole time, but we get the joy of spending each Thursday with her!