We drove out to Concord which was about 20 minutes from where we were staying and went to see a couple of historic sites out there. This area was a beautiful part of the country with thick groves of trees everywhere, lots of rivers and lakes and tons of historical sites.
One of the first landmarks we came across was the "Battle Road" trail which is a 5.5 mile path leading from Boston to Concord. It was along this trail that the British Troops marched
to seize a stash of weapons that the colonists had stored. It was here that Paul Revere made his famous midnight right ahead of the troops warning the Minute Men that "The British Are Coming!"
After walking along the trail for a few minutes, we got back in the car and drove into the center of Concord (the town's probably not much larger now than it was back then) and went to see the North Bridge. This is where the first real clash occurred between the British and the Colonists. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously described this skirmish as the "Shot head round the world."
To finish off our short trip to the area, we drove over to Walden Pond. This is the lake where Henry David Thoreau built a tiny house and spent two years "living deliberately."
It was very beautiful there, very calm and serene. This spot is apparently fairly popular with the 50+ crowd as there were probably a dozen of them swimming back and forth across the lake. We followed a small dirt trail all around the lake which took about 45 minutes. The only thing that broke the silence was a commuter train that rushed past once but, hey, those tracks have been there since Thoreau's time so he had to deal with that as well.
All-in-all it was a very enjoyable little excursion. There were a lot of other sites out there that would have been cool to see but we simply didn't have the time.
2 comments:
Sounds fun. I have been wanting to go to Boston forever now. I would love to visit all the historical sites, and maybe even dump tea in the harbor =).
Of course, for us it would have to be herbal tea.
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