We took a day and drove up to Massachusetts to see the Boston Temple, Plymouth Rock and Cape Cod. Before Boston was built the closest temple to Ben and his family was Washington D.C. and that is at least a 10 hour drive, so his parents are so grateful to have this temple within an hour. The temple had years of opposition and delay but it was finally completed shortly before Ben was ready to leave on his mission to Paris so he was actually only the fourth person to go through it!
Ben's dad is a professor so he always had summers off. When Ben was growing up they would all load in their big van (he's the oldest of 10 so they always had a big van!) and go on weeks-long road trips all over the country. He said they rarely had much of an itinerary but they would stop at every ballpark along the way for his dad and every temple along the way for his mom. I think that's a tradition we will carry forward!
Driving in New England is something else. Being from UT I am very used to and comfortable with the grid system. New England is anything but a grid! Here is an intersection in Cambridge, Mass that is very typical in any NE state.
The picture really doesn't do it justice but you can kind of notice how there are cars going every direction. Ben's explanation is that since all of the towns are so old, they weren't designed for cars. I think he may be on to something!
After the temple we headed on to the Plymouth, MA and had lunch at this awesome little cafe on the water. The kids were so well behaved the whole day and at lunch, we convinced Eve (Ben's 6 year old sister who doesn't eat anything!) to eat fish and chips! I am a fairly stubborn and competitive person and I had made it my personal goal to make her eat real food while we were there so I considered this a personal victory! After lunch we walked on the beach and found the Mayflower {replica}. It was pretty cool!
Plymouth Rock on the other hand, was a little anti-climactic. It's so much smaller than I expected it to be, I'm surprised the pilgrims even saw it from their ship!
The rock held the kids' attention for about .8 seconds so we decided to power on to Cape Cod. On the way to the car though we passed this beautiful park trail with a stream full of ducks. Now that got the kids' attention quickly!
Boston kept waving and yelling "Byyyyeee duckies!" all the way back to the car!
I already posted most of our Cape Cod pictures in the last post but I love this one of my boys.
It was such a full day but all 3 kids were perfect from beginning to end. Even though they weren't really showing it, apparently they were all pretty wiped because this is what our backseat looked like soon after we started driving home!
1 comment:
I adore Boston. I haven't seen the temple with the spire on it, so pretty!
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