Snowtober

Snow was predicted for Saturday, but we wanted to try to get at least part of our sightseeing in before the afternoon snow storm. When we left it was 39 and within a half an hour it dropped to 33. The cars coming from the north had snow on them and it started to snow on us. We decided to pick up some groceries and head back to the RV since the places we wanted to visit were an hour north. It was a good decision since West Orange, our destination, received 8” of snow. We had planned on seeing Thomas Edison’s home and workshop, then heading to the Statue of Liberty and Carlos bakery from the show Cake Boss. We are now trying to figure out how we can shuffle things around and what might be dropped from our itinerary.

This was only the fourth time it’s snowed in Central Park in October since the Civil War. Over 2.7 million people are without power due to the snow. The trees are not used to having leaves when it snows so the weight of the wet snow on the leaves and branches caused down lines and a bunch of problems. I’m thankful that the storm came on a weekend so fewer people were out on the roads.

Jersey Shore

After 70-100% chance of rain on Thursday I knew it would be best to go to the Jersey shore on Friday. We had great weather as we drove south to Atlantic City. We drove around and saw the sights then headed further south to see Lucy, a six story elephant shaped building.

Lucy was built to attract visitors and potential buyers to the Jersey shore by a real estate investor. It worked- presidents and royalty from around the world came to see Lucy and climb up her spiral stairs. She has survived hurricanes, floods and even a fire (a tavern once occupied Lucy and the fire was set by drunk patrons). In the 60s Lucy was neglected and a businessman bought the property and planned to tear it down. The Save Lucy committee formed and raised enough money to move the elephant two blocks down. In 1976, Lucy was designated as a National Historical Landmark.

While visiting Lucy we popped over to the beach. The sand was so fine and lovely. It was brisk out- about 42 and the beach was empty. Are those clouds filled with the predicted snow for tomorrow?

Our last stop was Cape May at the southern most point on the shoreline. There’s a lighthouse there and a bunch of Victorian homes.

It was just us and the birds at the beach. There are a lot of birds that migrate to the area.

Rhode Island

Roger Williams founded the state of Rhode Island after being kicked out of Massachusetts for his religious beliefs. He had come to America believing he could avoid persecution for his beliefs, but it was more of the same here. He left Massachusetts in the middle of the night, leaving his wife and family behind and walked for 13 days until he arrived in the Rhode Island area.

He had a good relationship with the Indians in the area because he took time to get to know them, their culture and traditions. He wrote books about the Indian's language, beliefs and how we shouldn't be taking their land.

Williams went to England a few times to get an official document to make it a colony with religious freedom. He was finally granted his charter and this was the first separation of church and state.

No one knows what he looked like- there aren’t any pictures of him so each artist that has portrayed him has used their own interpretation. One of the statues in the park has the face of baseball player Ted Williams because the artist assumed the two were related. The date of his birth and death aren't documented anywhere either.

Rhode Island was the last state to sign the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was included to provide for freedom of religion.

Rhode Island maybe the smallest state, but it has the longest official name of all the states-State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Connecticut in the Fall

We traveled around the seaport villages of Mystic and Stonington and up to Hartford. We loved the fall colors. After being in Hawaii and Italy for the past six autumns we haven’t seen the trees change colors so we really appreciated the colors.

Famous homes

We toured Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s homes in Hartford, CT. We were prohibited to take photos in both.

Mark Twain was born Nov. 30, 1835 in Missouri. He looked sickly, but his mom hoped that Halley’s comet, that blazed through the sky the night he was born, was a good sign for his future. Ironically, he died the night Halley’s comet returned in 1910. His home cost $40,000 to build which amounts to 3.8 million dollars today. The home has 28 rooms, 7 indoor bathrooms, and a phone (he was friends with Alexander Graham Bell). He wrote some of his most famous stories here- Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain put $200,000 into a printing press type of machine and lost all his money. The family had to sell the home and they moved to Europe where the cost of living was lower. They returned to the US years later.

Right across the yard from his home was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home. At the time, Hartford was the place to be in the country. Harriet downsized to this 12 bedroom home. She had twin daughters that never married and lived with her and her husband.

Her father was in the seminary and they moved from the east coast to Ohio when she was younger. She ended up meeting her husband there while in an English club called Semicolon. They had twin daughters followed by another baby that died from cholera. While in Ohio she became more familiar with the slave situation since neighboring Kentucky was a slave state. After the loss of her child she felt for the loss the slaves felt as their families were torn apart and wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. At one point she met President Lincoln and he said to her, “So you’re the little lady that started this war.” Harriet was 4’11”. Her book was so popular when it came out that the only book that outsold it was the bible. Her first royalty check was $10,000 while her husband made between $500 and $1000 a year as a professor.

Amici in Connecticut

We spent most of our days in Connecticut visiting with friends we were stationed with in Italy. The kids had a great time playing Just Dance and other video games, wrestling with Rick and jumping on the trampoline with the Mowry family.

We got lost in a corn maze with Lisa and Ally McGuinn, more friends from Italy. The maze had ten checkpoints and at each one we referred to our clue helper list to help us turn the correct way. Jacob had sports clues and Faith had American history.

Reconnecting with friends across the country is another bonus of this adventure!

Boston, Mass 02134

Newton’s first law of motion is that objects in motions tend to stay in motion/objects at rest will stay at rest unless a force acts upon it. We took two days off from sightseeing while it poured in the Boston area and it was hard to get up and get going that next day, but we had yet to see Boston!

Bunker Hill was our first stop. Have I mentioned that this trip has been like Jacob’s 5th grade history book coming to life? It’s been wonderful hearing about people we learned about last year. Faith will know all this history when she learns it next year. The battle took place around Breed and Bunker hills which were farms owned by Breed and Bunker. The American troops built a 6ft wall overnight on Breed’s Hill surprising the English when they woke up on their boats in the harbor the next morning. They had wanted the colonists to build barracks for months and thought the Americas were lazy because they never got anything done. The Americans were tired from working all night. They didn’t have training and they didn’t have much ammunition so they were told to “wait til you see the whites of their eyes” before shooting. The English won the battle, but paid a big price with a third of their men dying in the fight.

Our next stop was the North End for some Italian food. It was just like Italy- little shops, little roads and alleys… and no place to park! We did what you do in Italy- park a mile away and walk. We grabbed some pizza, saw the Old North Church where Paul Revere hung the “one if by land, two if by sea” lamps, walked past Paul Revere’s home and strolled through Boston Commons.

Old North church above. Paul Revere's house below.

We saw the Occupy Boston protesters, the Cheers! bar based on the tv show and cemeteries where Sam Adams, John Hancock, Ben Franklin’s parents, Paul Revere and other leaders were buried.

We walked through a Holocaust memorial with the numbers the prisoners were assigned etched on the sides of the walls. It was incredible how many there were covering the walls on each of each of the six columns. Each column represented a death camp and each had a million prisoner numbers on them to represent the six million Jews that died in those camps. Just overwhelming!