Sunday we headed out to see a few sites and our Google maps told us we might encounter some issues from Hurricane Ida (thankfully, we didn't)
Frederick Law Olmsted National National Historic Site is the home and offices of the landscape architect known for Central Park, the U.S. Capitol grounds, and the Biltmore estate, to name a few.
The estate was surrounded by greenery, it was hard to see the house!
This was the view from the backyard of the estate
There was a cool exhibit about women who worked for his firm and their contributions to landscape architecture.
Right next door was an LDS chapel! That was kind of a fun discovery
We drove through a lovely neighborhood with some brightly painted homes
And found ourselves here, the home where JFK was born.
It was kind of hard to get a photo of the home with a HUGE sycamore tree in the way and cars parked in front of it.
We headed next to the Longfellow house--Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
This beautiful home was used as Washington's headquarters and was later Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's home
We could not tour the house (pandemic precautions) but we could see the grounds.
We found this Cooper's hawk there!
Monday we headed to Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site. It was a 1600s era iron works site.
The main house is the only original building and had these fantastic doors
The blast furnace, forges, warehouse and wharf, and waterwheels.
This bellows was as large as a small car. It was immense!
The water power at this site made it all possible.
This was a really cool relief map of the area, noting all the buildings and the river
We headed to Salem next. We went to see Salem Maritime National Historic Site.
This site was all about sailing and shipping, with a reconstruction of a 1700s ship
In the foreground, on the grass, are the rest of the masts of the ship, it looked pretty ridiculous with stunted masts
The ship had this at the waterline
And no bowsprit, but a really interesting (odd?) figurehead
We went to see the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, a lovely, small park in the middle of Salem
Every person put to death as a witch was memorialized with their own "bench", with name, punishment, and date
Almost every single one had some kind of mementos on the bench, if just flowers.
We saw the House of Seven Gables, you can tour it but we just stopped by to take a few photos. It is located on the waterfront, surrounded by greenery and other buildings, so taking photos was difficult.
Cute matching Little Free Library out front
Interesting and odd sights around Salem:
A floating hut...
Lots of decorated cement barriers placed to create outdoor dining areas.
A parking meter right by some restaurant seating. Do you have to pay to sit and pay to eat?
A cute flower box on the outside of a restaurant
We headed to Topsfield, Massachusetts to see the Smith family monument.
Five generations of Smiths lived in Topsfield
This home is on the site of the Smith home, there was a marker out front.
We stopped in Andover to see Harriet Beecher Stowe's grave
And headed into New Hampshire! The oldest state library was started in New Hampshire in 1717, before we were even a nation!
We stopped at Southern New Hampshire University to see a work of art, got to see more than one as there are works of art dotting the campus all over!
This was the work of art we came to see:
We liked this one too, tried to get our doggy to pose with it
Some fun signs: Massachusetts has a thing called a breakdown lane? So if you need to have an emotional moment, there's a special lane just for that!
Apparently people don't know how to drive in a roundabout, so we saw these signs a few times
Cute houses like this were everywhere
There was a statue of Franklin Pierce out front (and Daniel Webster too, but he wasn't president although he was far more popular)
We only got to peek into the Senate, the House of Representatives was undergoing construction
The visitor center/gift shop had ALL these bumper stickers and signs from elections as far back as at least the 1990s
This was by the state capitol. We saw lots of them in Massachusetts too. I don't quite understand how they work... just a random fire alarm on the street?
We stopped by the Old North Cemetery to see Franklin Pierce's grave
We stopped by the Pierce Manse (not open that day). It didn't originally stand in this spot but there were railroad tracks in the front yard and a river in the backyard!
We drove through Weare, New Hampshire. It's pronounced, "Where"
Scenery as we drove
The state highway signs have the profile of the Old Man of the Mountain
We stopped in Gilsum, New Hampshire to see the gravesite of Solomon Mack, Joseph Smith's maternal grandfather. The entire line of headstones were Mack family. They needed cleaning!
We drove into Vermont, briefly that evening
We went to find a Brigham Young monument in a town park
See, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there? In the back corner? That's it!
Brigham Young was born in the town of Whitingham, Vermont
On the way back, we stopped to take in the view at Hogback Mountain overlook.
The guard rails there were just covered with stickers from all over the U.S.
We saw this cute farm as we drove back to New Hampshire
Wednesday we drove into Vermont and then briefly back into New Hampshire
We were going to see Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site
And we got to see some frogs!
We drove into Vermont at the very bottom
We made our way up to Plymouth to see Calvin Coolidge's birthplace, a tiny litle hamlet of a town that is mostly a historical site now
My favorite was the post office... it's just a USPS box with the sign over it!
We headed over to Plymouth Notch Cemetery to see Coolidge's grave
There was an entire row, more than a dozen people, of Coolidges buried there
Interesting to note that Vermont has black and white informational signs--these are not the mileage signs for how far away a town is, they are signs for destinations
Drove along side rivers
Saw some farms and beautiful countryside
We got to end our day with this: The car straps were not done up tight enough (S and J hook everything up and S didn't get them tight enough) so when we took a tight turn, the car went off. Yikes! It was a somewhat easy fix but scared us all as we were on a dirt road out in the country and it was getting dark!
Friday we drove up to Jericho, Vermont
We went to see a Snowflake Bentley exhibit at the Old Mill
We got some Vermont maple syrup while we were there
Then we went to Ben & Jerry's to ruin our dinner by having ice cream first!
Saturday we headed to the Joseph Smith birthplace
This hearthstone was the hearthstone in the home where Joseph Smith was born, it is now inside the visitor center.
The grounds and flowers were beautiful and we got this photo of butterfly checking out the flowers
J liked this sign, trying to surmise how a motorcycle would do that exact maneuver without falling over
Every on ramp has this set of signs, I guess people don't know to use their turn signal to change lanes in Vermont?
We went to Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. It's a beautiful mansion and grounds, next door to a farm (which is managed separately, but tells part of the same story)
Marsh grew up on the farm, Billings owned it next, and his daughter married a Rockefeller and inherited the farm. All three families were committed to conservation and preservation of the Vermont landscape
While we were there our dog got to meet some cows. As the Mr. walked over to the fence with her, three cows immediately came over to see her.
We headed back to camp and dropped of the Mr. and the dog and J and S and I went to the capitol building. We saw this at the visitor center across the street.
The building was beautiful inside
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