East Coast Summer Kick-Off: Our Maine Home

After being on the road and in hotels for the past several days, we were excited to be making our way to our final trip destination.  We left Massachusetts, popped through New Hampshire, and cruised to our final destination of Trenton, ME by mid-afternoon.

We made it!!

We loved the little cottage on the ocean that we stayed in over the next 4 nights.  Eider Way was so cute and cozy...and had the best backyard ever!  Although it was about a 20 minute drive across the bridge to Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park each day, we loved the seclusion and peacefulness of our little cottage home.

The cottage was really nice. It had one bathroom and one bedroom with a kitchen, dining, and living room on the main floor.  There were large windows along the entire back of the cottage that overlooked the ocean.

There was also a really big loft area that had 3 more beds.  The kids took turns rotating through the big bed, the twin bed, and the trundle bed each night.  And they loved watching the tide come in from the upstairs windows.

Just past the backyard of our cottage was our own private rocky beach.  At low tide, the kids (especially the girls) spent hours playing and exploring the tide pools.  Tides are amazing, and most of the beach area (including the large peninsula area) would be underwater at high tide.

Every day we would go into the national park to explore, but then we would make sure to return to our cottage by mid to late afternoon to enjoy "our" beach at low tide.  It was the kids' favorite thing to do.

We found tons of sea snails, barnacles, clams, shells, and crab exoskeletons.

One day we found two large jellyfish that had washed up onto the beach.

We found some dead crabs and lots of crab exoskeletons that they had shed, but didn't find any live crabs.  The kids also had really hoped to find a starfish.  We did find 2 starfish arms, but never found the starfish that they went with.  I had read about seeing seals on or near our beach, but we never did.

The girls played and played together on our beach each afternoon.  They'd know it was time to come in for dinner when this little land bridge out to the peninsula area would start to disappear. 

I loved watching them play together and enjoy each other so much all week long.

The setting of our cottage was just perfect.  I loved watching the ocean, exploring the tide pools, and listening to the water.  We could even smell the ocean scent each time we'd get back to the cottage from our daily explorations. 

We spent our first afternoon getting unpacked and settled into the cottage and exploring our beach.  We then went into Ellsworth (the closest town to where we were staying) to eat a yummy dinner at Helen's and get our groceries for the week.  We got all settled so we'd be ready to start exploring Acadia National Park the next day.

East Coast Summer Kick-Off: Boston

Following our stop at Niagra Falls and a good night of sleep in New York, we filled up on our free hotel breakfast and hit the road for the next stage of our journey.

Destination?  Boston!

We had a full 7+ hours of travel from Niagra Falls to Boston, but decided to take a short detour.  When we got our travel map for Christmas, we had a family discussion about which states the kids most wanted to visit.  Rhode Island was a top state on Adelie's list.  Since Boston is a short drive from Rhode Island, we popped down into Rhode Island for dinner before heading into Boston so that Adelie could mark it off her list.

The restaurant I had found in Providence, RI (Three Sisters) that looked like a winner had stopped serving food before we arrived.  (Grrrr...)  Luckily, it was located across the street from this great park.  The kids played on the playground while I made us a make-shift dinner of PB & J and fruit from the car.  Then we got some yummy ice cream (from the restaurant that was no longer serving food), walked on a nice walking path right across from the park, soaked in the beautiful weather and time out of the van, and enjoyed the fact that Rhode Island drivers always stop for pedestrians trying to cross the road.

After our Rhode Island pit-stop, we loaded up and finished the journey to Boston.  We checked into our hotel, and Briggs was thrilled to discover we had a perfect view of Boston's subway/elevated train (the T).  We settled in for a good night of rest so we'd be ready for our full day of Boston exploration.

We woke the kids up a little early the next morning so we could enjoy our free hotel breakfast (the best of the trip) and walk from our hotel to start our day off with a Duck Boat tour of Boston.  It was a highlight of the day for the whole family.

The Duck Boat is an amphibious vehicle that took us on a tour around Boston, ending in the Charles River.

The 80 minute tour covered many of the highlights of Boston, our tour guide was funny and very informative, and the kids even got to the drive the boat for a bit along the Charles River.  We all really enjoyed our start to the day!

Following our tour, we walked from the Museum of Science (where our tour started and ended) to the Bunker Hill Monument to follow the Freedom Trail to see all the historical sites in Boston.

Here we are standing at the beginning (or ending, since we were starting at what is traditionally the end) of the Freedom Trail.  Ready for our 2.5 mile historical walking tour of Boston.

I feel like this photo of the Bunker Hill Monument is a good reflection of our time on the Freedom Trail.  If you zoom in, you can see Zach and Staley intently and thoroughly reading the placard while Adelie and Briggs are just sitting on the ground waiting for them to be done...while I take pictures. 

Adelie's favorite part of the day was running ahead to see where the Freedom Trail went and then waving us along saying, "Freedom Trail, this way!  Freedom Trail, this way!"

Briggs' preferred activity was complaining about his legs being tired and asking for piggy back rides.

Boston is a really interesting city.  It has lots of old buildings and narrow cobblestone streets and historical significance, but it's also still a large, metropolitan city.  So sites like this...a cool old street with big modern buildings in the background...are common.

Our weather was beautiful on our Boston day.  The day before we arrived, Boston's temperatures were close to 90 degrees, but our day was in the high 60's and sunny.  We stopped for a scrumptious lunch in the North End (Little Italy) of Boston at Bencotto's.  The pasta we ordered was SO good!  And we got really lucky with our timing.  We got seated immediately at the last available outdoor table.  By the time we left, there were lots of people waiting for a table.  After lunch we grabbed some yummy cannolis at Modern Pastries and enjoyed them in a nearby park.

We continued along the Freedom Trail, seeing sites like The Old North Church, the Paul Revere House, cemeteries where famous people like Samuel Adams and John Hancock are buried, the USS Constitution, and the old State House.  The Freedom Trail ends in Boston Common, a large public garden where the kids played on a playground for a little bit.

We then headed over to the Public Garden, a gorgeous public botanical garden, where we took a swan boat ride around the pond.  (If you've ever read 'Make Way for Ducklings', you'll know about the Public Garden and the swan boats.)

The Boston Public Garden was another highlight for the whole family.  It was lovely and relaxing and a fun place to decompress a bit after our big day of exploring the city.  (We also found the bronze statues in the garden of Mrs. Mallard and her 8 little ducklings from 'Make Way for Ducklings.')

Although we didn't eat dinner at the Cheers restaurant, we stopped for a quick photo op before walking to Fanuil Hall (a big shopping/dining area in downtown Boston) and enjoyed dinner on the patio at Ned Devine's Irish pub.  We then checked out the harbor and finished off our day with one member of the family's top request...

riding the T-train back to our hotel.

When it was all said and done, we walked over 11 miles while exploring the entire city of Boston.  It was a fun, full, exhausting (especially for the youngest member of our party) day.  We were all ready for a good night of sleep!

The next morning, we enjoyed another filling hotel breakfast and then decided to make a quick stop by the Harvard campus since we were staying just a few miles from it.

We wandered around the campus (watching them prepare for a big graduation), got our picture taken with the famous John Harvard statue (we did NOT touch his shoe), and looked up statistics of just how difficult it is to get into Harvard...while the kids all determined which Ivy League school they would like to attend.  After our brief stop, we hopped back in the van to make our way to the final destination of our trip.

Thanks for the fun, Boston! 

Maine, here we come!!

East Coast Summer Kick-Off: Niagra Falls

We didn't even make it to the end of the school year before we jumped head-long into our summer plans.

The kids' last day of school

Each of the past few years, we've headed off to explore a national park as soon as the kids are out of school for the year...trying to beat the summer crowds and kick off our summer with a fun trip before summer activities start up.  This year we hit a bit of a snag when a random snow day in February (rather than a digital day) moved the last day of school from a Friday to the following Monday...after we had already started making our vacation plans.  Instead of changing our plans, we just ended our school year a day earlier than everyone else.  Although sad to be missing the 3rd and 4th grade talent show (Adelie) and EMS field day (Staley), the kids still determined that heading off on vacation made up for missing the final day of the school year.

School is out for the summer.  

Well, for us anyway.

Our summer national park choice this year was Acadia National Park in Maine.  After contemplating the pros and cons of driving versus flying, we made the determination that our road tripping crew was up to the task of making the 22 hour trek from Eureka to Acadia, with some fun stops along the way.

We hit the road as soon as the kids got home from school on Friday, getting a good 5.5 hours of road time under our belts to start our journey.  We actually offered to stop a little earlier that first day, but the kids asked if we could just keep going.  (They are seriously hard core!)  We had our dinner of PB & J in the car and didn't stop until we hit Toledo, OH.

With our ample amount of car time, we listened to SO many audiobooks.  We enjoyed Ms. Rapscott's Girls, Holes (a favorite), The Lemonade War, Tuck Everlasting, A-Z Mysteries, a Boxcar Children mystery, A Bear Called Paddington, Clementine and Clementine: Friend of the Week (favorites), and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (a favorite).  We started Ghost, but it wasn't holding our interest (especially the younger two), so we abandoned that one.

While we listened to audiobooks, the kids colored and drew, did sticker books, played with toys, ate lots and lots of snacks, and chewed gum.  My brilliant idea for this trip was to give each kid a gallon size zip lock bag that they filled with their designated number of car snacks each day.  They also got to pick out their own package of gum at the start of the trip.  They each had hand sanitizer, Kleenex and wipes, their water bottle, and a trash bag.  In this way, they could meet all their own needs without excessively asking for another snack or a piece of gum or handing me their trash.  They learned to ration their own snacks and gum and handle their own needs.  It made them more independent...and kept me more sane.

When we got really road weary, we busted out the DVD player.  They chose to watch the episodes from the first season of Bluey on 2 of our travel days.  But for the most part, our audiobooks and other activities kept us occupied and happy during our travels.

We celebrated each state that we entered, keeping track of the number of states we'd been in.  (Spoiler alert:  We were in 9 different states throughout the course of our travels...and 2 countries.)  We also played the license plate game, ending up 4 states short of 50 by the time we got home.  Darn Hawaii, New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia!  

After our first night's rest in Toledo and breakfast in the hotel the next morning, we cruised through Pennsylvania into New York on our way to our first official stop of the trip:  Niagra Falls!

We parked downtown on the US side and walked to check out the falls.  

A running joke in our family is how Staley does not like Canada.  It originated at Epcot on our most recent Disney trip when, for no specific reason, Staley decided that she didn't like Canada. Since that time, Staley has verbalized an adamant opposition to Canada...which is why we felt it was totally necessary to update our passports, bring along all our official documents, and walk over to Canada to see the falls from the other side.

We walked across Rainbow Bridge from the US to Canada, crossing over the international boundary line and officially adding another country to our multi-state road trip.

Unfortunately, that's when our Canadian plans went awry.  After wasting an hour waiting in line and struggling to fill out the world's longest and most frustrating on-line form, we experienced technological difficulties and were turned away by a very unpleasant and unhelpful Canadian border agent because we were unable to access (and thus, unable to complete) the end of the form.  In the end, we decided that Staley was right and Canada is the worst.  (Giving Canada "the hand" follows a long-standing Walles family joke.  I think it was well-deserved.)

We walked back to the US, enjoyed the pleasant and easy process of getting back into our own country, and then walked over to Goat Island for some more up-close views (and mists) from the falls.

As we were walking around Goat Island, a thunderstorm rolled in.  While the rain poured and the thunder and lightning started, we rushed to find some shelter to wait out the storm before heading out to check into our hotel.

We checked into our hotel and I took the kids swimming in the hotel pool while Zach ordered pizza for dinner and went to pick it up.  We enjoyed some swimming time and a hotel pizza picnic before settling in for the night and preparing for another day of travel and our next fun destination.

Although our first stop on our trip didn't work out perfectly, it was still fun to experience the wonder of Niagra Falls with our kids...and to experience solidarity with Staley on our now familial opposition to Canada.