Today we left the RV at Congregation Beth Israel and drove to the Brookline area to visit three NPS locations.  The first was Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, a house occupied by George Washington from 1775 to 1776 and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from 1837 to 1882:

The grounds include a small formal garden:

The house was owned by the Longfellow family until it was given to the Park Service in 1972.  All of the furnishings in the home are original.  Longfellow and his children were quite the collectors:

The mirror on the left was in the house in Washington’s time, and was too heavy to move when the room was re-wallpapered in the 19th century, so behind the mirror the original 18th century wallpaper remains:

Longfellow’s study, where many of his poems were written:

Longfellow wrote a poem titled The Village Blacksmith which mentions a particular chestnut tree near his house.  When the tree needed to be cut down to build a road, local children presented Longfellow with this chair in 1879, made from the tree mentioned in the poem.  Longfellow in turn wrote the poem From my Arm-Chair regarding the chair:

At the window seat in the center of the photo, Mrs. Longfellow’s dress caught on fire, fatally burning her:

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

Our next stop was Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.  This site is the home and office of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture in the US, known for his designs of Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, among many other parks and gardens.  He also was involved in the establishment of public lands set aside for preservation and conservation, authoring Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report in 1865:

We explored the Olmstead-designed landscape around the home:

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

After having lunch at a local pizza place, we visited John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, where JFK was born and lived for the first few years of his life:

The Kennedy family sold the house in 1920.  JFK’s mother Rose Kennedy purchased the house back in 1966 and restored it to represent what she recalled the home to look like when the Kennedy family lived there.  About 20% of the artifacts in the home were owned by the Kennedy family:

JFK was born in this room:

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

Good Shabbos from Congregation Beth Israel in Malden, Massachusetts!

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:

We awoke to a disgustingly humid day at the Walmart of Brandford, Connecticut.  We got on the road as quick as we could and drove east to the Salt Meadow Unit of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge:

We hiked down to the marsh.  We had to walk quickly to avoid the tenacious swarms of flies:

On the way back, Trish and M encountered this healthy looking fellow:

At the visitor contact station, the kids received a Biologist in Training workbook which is designed to be completed at a body of water.  We took the books with us, as well as the patches they will receive when the workbooks are complete:

Our next stop was the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut.  The large hoop on the left represents the cross section of a modern Ohio-class submarine, while the small hoop represents the cross section of the Navy’s first submarine, the Holland-class submarine:

The kids found a bird nest in the tail section of this submarine display:

The museum includes a walking tour of the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine and the first nautical vessel to reach the North Pole:

The torpedo room:

Officer’s mess:

The boat commander was the only one to have a private cabin:

The Nautilus was the first submarine to use staircases instead of ladders to move between decks.  It’s quite steep:

It’s not the Hilton:

This schedule in the mess hall may soon appear in our RV:

More bunks:

In the museum itself, a Polaris missile, a submarine-launched ballistic missile, was on display:

A model of a Gato-class submarine:

Modern submarines have three decks:

We left the RV at the museum and drove the truck across the river to the Coast Guard Academy in New London where we visited the US Coast Guard Museum:

I really enjoyed this museum!  I had no idea that the Coast Guard was formed from many other services, including the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service which was formed in the 1790s to collect import taxes from ships arriving in the US.  The Coast Guard was moved from the Department of Treasury to Transportation to Homeland Security.  It’s the only branch of the military not under the Department of Defense:

Here are various life saving devices from the U.S. Life-Saving Service, which was merged in 1915 with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to form the Coast Guard.  The object hanging from the block and tackle is a britches buoy, a floating life ring mated to a canvas diaper.  The person needing rescue would get into the diaper and be hoisted to safety:

This life preserver is made of wood and is hinged to be snapped around the neck.  The instructions say “when jumping, hold down with hands” to prevent a broken neck upon hitting the water.  We were relieved to read that this design never made it into production:

After returning to Groton to pick up the RV, we drove North to Norwich, Connecticut where we will be staying in the parking lot of the Brothers of Joseph synagogue through Shabbos.  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.