Norton travels, USA and beyond: Massachusetts to Maine to Vermont

We finished our south of Boston time with a drive to Cape Cod. We went to the Hyannis JFK Museum (mostly family photos), walked around Hyannisport, and ate super fresh fish & chips. On Monday we drove to the farthest north point in Massachusetts, Salisbury Beach. From there we took an outing to two towns on the northwest side of Boston –Lexington and Concord. On the Lexington Battle Green the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired as British soldiers confronted the Minute Men on April 19, 1775. We toured Buckman’s Tavern across from the green, then traveled the Battle Road between the two towns, where the British soldiers marched hoping to destroy the colonial patriots’ stores of guns and ammunition in Concord. At the North Bridge the first real battle took place, famous as the “shot heard ‘round the world”. This is why Patriot’s Day is celebrated as a Massachusetts state holiday, and largely why we have the Second Amendment. Many of the old buildings are still there in Concord, as well as the homes of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is a beautiful, nicely wooded area.

The next day we drove north, through New Hampshire and visited Fort Constitution there, then went into Maine. I was especially excited to do this because these are two of the ten states I hadn’t been to previously. The Maine coastline is absolutely beautiful! We saw the most photographed of Maine’s 65 lighthouses, Nubble Lighthouse, then ate lobster nearby. On our way back we stopped in New Hampshire and bought new tires for the truck since they have no sales tax there. Today we drove to Brattleboro, Vermont, another new state for us. The town has a large art colony and we felt like we were back in the ‘60s. The setting is idyllic; green hillsides beside two rivers and plenty of trees and old buildings. The other important thing about today’s travels is that we were going west, Maine being the farthest northeast tip of our trip. So we are sort of headed towards home.