This morning we left the RV behind and drove north to Lexington, Massachusetts, home of Minute Man National Historical Park, which interprets the people, places, and events surrounding the American Revolutionary War’s Battles of Lexington and Concord.  The parking lot is a ten minute walk from the visitor center:

At the Battle Road visitor center, the kids picked up their Junior Ranger workbooks:

We walked over to the Jacob Whittemore house.  Whittemore evacuated his pregnant wife and children from the house as the fighting along what would late be known as Battle Road passed right by his house:

Trish and the kids participated in a reenactment of colonial militia training:

The ranger demonstrated the firing of his Musket:

We spoke to the two other rangers in the house about colonial life:

Back at the visitor center, the kids handed in their workbooks and received their Junior Ranger badges:

On the way to the North Bridge unit of the park, we stopped by The Wayside, owned at different times by Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Mulford Stone:

Our next stop was Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau wrote his most famous work in a cabin built on land owned by his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.  We set out to find the cabin site:

The cabin was torn down shortly after Thoreau’s two-year experiment in simple living was over in 1847.  The cabin roof was used as the roof of a local pig sty, and the rest of the wood used as scrap.  In 1945, amateur archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins (yes, the same Roland Wells Robbins who identified the location of the Saugus Iron Works) identified the location of Thoreau’s cabin:

Since well before the discovery of the cabin location, Thoreau fans would come to this nearby location and leave a stone where the cabin was thought to have stood.  The pile is now quite large:

Many of the stones have engraved or written words on them, ranging from the profound to the mundane:

Walden Pond:

After hiking around Walden Pond, we arrived at the North Bridge unit of Minute Man National Historical Park, site of the bridge where Colonial Militia members, English subjects, first fired upon the King’s Army, starting the Revolutionary War.  Emerson’s poem would later describe this as the location of the “shot heard round the world”:

The recreated bridge:

The British soldiers had set out from Boston to Concord to recover four cannons stolen and hidden by militia members at a local farm.  This is one of the four canons, known as “The Hancock”:

We left Minute Man NHP and drove north to Lowell, Massachusetts, home of Lowell National Historical Park, which interprets the rise and fall of Lowell as America’s first Company town and center of American textile production.  Most of the buildings in Lowell are former textile mills.  These buildings are now apartments and art studios:

This building is missing its roof:

We walked over to the visitor center, where the kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

We walked over to the Mill Girl’s Boardinghouse, where rural farm women lived while working in the mills.  The mills created one of the first opportunities for women to work independently outside of a farm setting:

Mill girls were later replaced by immigrants willing to work for lower wages.  The boarding house included displays on modern immigrants:

We passed many more factory buildings on the way back to the car:

We’ve enjoyed learning about US history through the nine NPS sites we’ve visited over the last few days.  Only two more to go!

Today we walked from the RV to the train station here in Malden.  With only a few minutes until the inbound train arrived, I was quite confused by the ticket buying kiosk.  Thankfully, a depot employee gave me a CharlieCard and showed us how to charge it up.  We boarded the local Orange Line train and rode the 19 minute trip into downtown Boston:

Downtown Boston isn’t at all laid out like a grid, increasing the sense of being in a labyrinth:

We walked to Faneuil Hall, home of the visitor center for Boston National Historical Park:
 

In this room at the hall, issues of the day have been debated in public meetings for over 200 years:

We picked up the Junior Ranger books for Boston National Historical Park, and also the Junior Ranger books for Boston African American National Historic Site since the visitor center dedicated to the latter is closed on Sundays.  We then wandered down to the harbor, where we picked up the Junior Ranger books for Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.  It turns out that in addition to the “generic” Junior Ranger book for this unit of the NPS, there are five more books and badges for each of the five major islands in Boston Harbor.  Some other time….

M asked the ranger a question as part of his Junior Ranger work:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their Junior Ranger badges:

Down at the waterfront the kids completed the Junior Ranger books for Boston African American National Historic Site as well.  We returned the workbooks to Faneuil Hall and the kids received their badges:

From Faneuil Hall, we walked the Freedom Trail, passing the Paul Revere House (grey, on the left), built in 1680 and the oldest structure in Boston:

We walked by an Italian religious ceremony which if I understood correctly was the carrying down the street of a statue brought over from Italy 95 years ago:

Continuing along the Freedom Trail, we crossed the Charles River and ended up at the Charlestown Navy Yard.  We visited the visitor center there, which is also part of Boston NHP.  This section of the visitor center focused on the yard’s rope making facility:

We next boarded the USS Cassin Young which is on display:

M and B man the stern 40mm Anti-aircraft gun:

View from the stern:

The officers meeting room.  Note the surgical light in the ceiling, as this was the only room on the ship large enough to be use as a surgical space:

The forward 5-inch gun:

Looking off the bow, the Bunker Hill Monument can be seen on the horizon:

Before going aboard the USS Constitution, we visited the USS Constitution Museum.  The museum had a fine model of the heavy frigate on display:

The Constitution is in dry dock right now, and the copper hull plating is being replaced.  The navy has a table set up in the museum where visitors can engrave their names on the copper plating that will ultimately be fastened to the hull:

After the museum, we returned to the navy yard visitor center where the kids handed in their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Our final stop of the day was visiting the USS Constitution.  Unfortunately, she is in dry dock, so her guns have been removed as well as the upper 75% of her masts and all of her sails.  The main deck can be walked, but no below deck access is available during this repair cycle:

All of the Constitution’s 52 guns are ashore:

I was very excited and moved to be aboard one of the first six frigates built by the US Navy over 220 years ago, the ship that was victorious in her famous engagements with HMS Guerriere and HMS Java.  I’ve read the first 19 books of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, so I consider myself to be something of an 18th and 19th century naval warfare aficionado.  Even without her sails, masts, and guns, the sense of history was palpable:

The USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned vessel afloat in the world.  “Commissioned” means that the USS Constitution is still an official part of America’s naval fleet.  The entire crew is composed of US Navy personnel.  One of the ship’s crew gave a brief talk about the ship:

After touring the ship, we walked to the nearest train station for the ride home:

It was a long day, but we learned a lot about Boston’s revolutionary and naval history!