This morning we said goodbye to our old and new friends in Sharon and drove towards Quincy, Massachusetts.  Along the way, we ended up encountering this tunnel.  It might be high enough, but there are plenty of scrape marks on the inside of the tunnel and on the left side some of the arch is broken away.  We backed into a driveway and went another way:

We arrived in Quincy and parked at a local supermarket, then walked the half or mile or so to the visitor center for Adams National Historical Park.  It’s the only NPS visitor center we’ve been to that’s located in a mall:

The visitor center interprets four generations of the Adams family, which include the second and sixth presidents of the US, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams:

The kids worked on their Junior Ranger workbooks:

They look angry that they’ve been made into Pez dispensers:

We waited for the trolley that picked us up for our tour:

The first stop was the house of John Adams’ father, built in the late 1600s, where John Adams was born in 1735.  Unfortunately, no photography is allowed in any of the buildings in the park:

The house next door was bought by John Adams’ father and given to John Adams.  John Quincy Adams was born here in 1825:

We next took the trolley to Peacefield, which was acquired by the Adams family in 1787.  John Adams died here on the 50th anniversary of independence, 4th of July, 1826, the same day that his friend and political opponent Thomas Jefferson died.  The interior contained family portraits that date back to the 1600s, as well as the desk at which John Adams wrote the Massachusetts constitution, which was the basis for the US constitution:

Also at this location is the library that was built posthumously for John Quincy Adams by his son, Charles Francis Adams.  Thousands of volumes fill the floor to ceiling shelves.  On display is the bible given as a gift to John Quincy Adams by the slaves of the Amistad, who were repatriated to Africa thanks to Adams’ actions as their lawyer in United States v. The Amistad: 

The formal garden at Peacefield:

On the way back to the visitor center we passed this statue, commemorating the birthplace of John Hancock in a house that used to stand here.  Today it is the site of the Adams Academy, a school founded by the Adams family:

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

Leaving Quincy, we drove North through the Big Dig and across the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge:

Our drive today ended at Congregation Beth Israel in Malden, Massachusetts.  We expect to be here through Shabbos:

The kids worked on their journals this afternoon as well as doing other homeschool: