Destination: Massachusetts

From left to right: Madison Camp (Accounting), Lyndsie Beesley (English), Dylan West (Business Administration),  Sidney Lewis (English), Allyson Gregory (English), Talor Stewart (Biology).

Thursday, March 9th, six ECU Honorables joined me at 2 a.m. to embark on a five-day, four-night adventure in Massachusetts.  For all these Honorables, it was a first-time visit to New England, though three (Madison, Sidney, and Talor) also joined me on an Honors Trip to New York City in 2015. When we got back, I asked everyone three questions:  What was your favorite experience on the trip? What was your favorite food? And did you experience any memorable firsts?  Here are their answers:

FAVORITE EXPERIENCE
Madison: The Old Manse (especially the piano playing); Lyndsie: Concord to Lexington trek; Dylan: The Freedom Trail; Sidney: Walden Pond; Ally: Walden Pond and the Old Manse; Talor: The MIT Museum (especially the holograph section).

FAVORITE FOOD
Madison: goat cheese and baby spinach panini at Helen's cafe in Concord; Lyndsie: clam chowder and ribeye hash at Sonsie in Boston and salmon salad at Border Cafe in Cambridge ; Dylan: Cubano sandwich at Sonsie's in Boston and pepperoni pizza at Sorrento's in Concord; Sidney: panini at Helen's Cafe in Concord; Ally:  cheese ravioli at Via Lago in Lexington; Talor: cheese pizza at Sorrento's in Concord.; 

MEMORABLE FIRSTS and MOSTS
Madison: UberPool, clam chowder, hotel room with full kitchen, and coldest walk; Lyndsie: geocache search and hotel room with a dishwasher; Dylan: clam chowder and coldest walk; Sidney: Uber ride, clam chowder, coldest walk, geocache drop-off; Ally:  cross-country trek (Concord to Lexington); Talor: shrimp.

Lyndsie at a replica of Thoreau's desk (in the same room with the real thing) at the Concord Museum.

Starting our walk through Minute Man Park between Concord and Lexington, where Colonial rebels attacked a retreating British Army on April 19, 1775. We ended up walking all the way to Lexington. Before our trip, several of us read Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick, which offers a blow-by-blow account of the battle.

Paul Revere was captured not far from this spot. According to my cell phone, we walked 9.24 miles on the first day of our trip!

Click the link below to see more pictures from our Honorable adventure.


Day two of our trip began with a visit to the Walden Pond National Historical site. Our park interpreter took us into a replica of the small cabin Thoreau built there in the summer of 1845. We all read Chapter Two of "Walden" before our visit.

After visiting the replica cabin, we walked from the Visitor's Center down to Walden Pond. We were the only people there.

It snowed all morning.

Our park interpreter took us to the actual site of Thoreau's cabin.

After leaving Walden Pond, we took a tour of Orchard House. Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women (1868/1869) here at a desk her father built for her.

The Concord School of Philosophy is next door to Orchard House. Louisa's father Bronson was head of this summer institute modeled on Plato's Academy, which met between 1879-1888.

The Orchard House doorbell.

After visiting Orchard House, we went to the Old North Bridge Visitor's Center, which featured this seemingly random painting of a Denver Broncos fan which I thought bore a remarkable resemblance to Ally.

Colonial rebels under the command of Major Buttrick ran the British Army off the Old North Bridge. You can just see Daniel Chester French's "Minute Man" statue behind our Honorable Six.

This replica of the Old North Bridge spans the Concord River.

After crossing the Bridge, we got a special tour of the Old Manse, which was built by Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandfather in 1770. Emerson asked Thoreau to plant a welcome garden here for the newly wed Nathanial Hawthorne and his wife Sofia Peabody when they moved here in 1842. Maddie was invited to play the piano in the parlor!

Etched in the glass: "Una Hawthorne / stood on this window / sill January 22d 1845 / while the trees were all / glass chandeliers – a goodly / show which she liked / much tho only ten / months old."

Talor and Nathaniel. Hawthorne published "Mosses from an Old Manse," while he lived here. It includes the short story "The Birthmark," which we all read before our visit.
After visiting the Old Manse, we walked to author's ridge in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where we saw the graves of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson and the Alcotts.


We capped off our second day with a long walk through Concord that culminated with an agitated home owner telling us to get off his lawn. Oops!

Day three of our Massachusetts adventure took us to Boston and almost record lows (the low for the day was 10 degrees; the record low, from 1939, was 9; the wind chill was -8). Our first stop was Bunker Hill and the statue of Joseph Warren (pictured above) commemorating the June 17, 1775 battle and Warren's martyrdom. We tried to follow the Freedom Trail bricks, but they were often covered with snow.

Faneuil Hall was our next stop. Frederick Douglas delivered 14 speeches here. In the painting behind Madison, Lyndsie and Sidney above--"Webster Replying to Senator Hayne" (1850) by George Healy--Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster makes the case for protectionist tariffs. The bust over Sidney's left shoulder is Lucy Stone (1818-1893), a prominent American abolitionist and suffragette.

We met our in-costume Freedom Trail tour guide at Faneuil Hall. Here we are in front of the Old South Church, which was built in 1729. Five-thousand colonists met here on December 16th, 1773. The result? The Boston Tea Party.

On Boston Common, our tour guide told us some gruesome tales about Puritan punishments. Nailing ears to the stocks?!?

Check out the gust of wind that's about to blow snow on everyone.

Concerned about the cold, our guide asked us at our last stop if they wanted the short or the long version of the history of the Boston Common. I was pleased when our honorable group voted for long version

After warming our toes at the Thinking Cup cafe, we headed to Sonsie for the best clam chowder in Boston, according to Boston Magazine. Then we visited the Isabella Stewart-Gardner Museum. We were all impressed by the Museum Courtyard (above and below)


Saturday night, some of us attended the American Repertory Theatre's adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ("The Donkey Show") at the Oberon Theater. Sunday morning, we visited the MIT Museum and then headed to the Harvard campus, where some went to the Natural History and Peabody Museums while others (me) went to the Harvard Art Museum.We flew out of Boston just before a deadly nor'easter, Winter Storm Stella, hit the coast, stranding thousands of travelers!