Boston

We left Vermont on Thursday, June 20^th and drove about 150-miles through New Hampshire and into Massachusetts, arriving at Hanscom AFB Family Campground, northwest of Boston. The campground does not take reservations, so we were lucky that they had a spot for us for our 15-night stay.

My first main task with this long stay, was to fix our clothes dryer which had a broken belt, almost three weeks. I had ordered and received a replacement belt, but hadn’t had enough time to work on it. The hardest part was to disassemble our laundry closest to get the dryer out to work on it. I spent most of an entire Saturday getting it all done.

We checked the Red Sox baseball schedule and decided to go to a Wednesday afternoon game at Fenway Park. Using the GovX web site, we were able to buy half-price box seat tickets in right-field. The game was fun to watch, although it was very hot sitting in the sun. Fenway Park has been the home of the Boston Red Sox since 1912.   

We drove to a nearby train station and took the subway to within a few blocks of the ballpark. Riding the subway is the easiest way to get around the Boston area. Boston has America’s first subway, which began carrying passengers on September 1, 1897.

We planned to visit the Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday. Although we visited Boston three years ago in July 2016, there were many places we didn’t get to see and the art museum was one of them. It was a huge museum and we enjoyed seeing all the sculptures, paintings, and other artifacts.

After visiting the art museum, we took the subway to Boston Common. We had walked the Freedom Trail on our last visit and knew if we followed the trail (marked on the sidewalk with vertically placed bricks) it would take us to Boston’s North End and its “Little Italy.” It is Boston’s oldest neighborhood.  

We wanted Italian for dinner and we had many, many Italian restaurants to choose from. We had an excellent dinner and then went across the street to stand in line at Mike’s Pastry. They are famous for their many different flavored cannoli’s. We bought a couple and headed back to Boston Common to catch our subway train back to the parking garage.

On Saturday we decided to use our 7-day subway pass again and headed into Boston to visit the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. The building was designed by architect I.M. Pei and it was dedicated in October 1979. The library and museum were very interesting with exhibits on the U.S. Space Program, the Peace Corps, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights, Robert F. Kennedy’s Attorney General’s office, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, the Oval Office and much more. I especially enjoyed watching the first televised Presidential Debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960.     

We met my cousin Wayne, who lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, for dinner on Tuesday night. I hadn’t seen him since about 1980 out in Vista, California at my Aunt and Uncle’s home. He reminded me that I had a tan Volkswagen Beetle the last time he saw me. I’d driven it out to California from Colorado Springs. It didn’t seem like it had been 39-years since we’d seen each other. 

We enjoyed lunch on Wednesday at one of our favorite seafood restaurant chains, Legal Sea Foods. I’d always gone to them in the Washington DC area.

We’re hunkered at “home” down yesterday for the July 4^th holiday. We thought about going into Boston to see the annual Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, but decided not to go because they expected 500,000 people to attend. We watched the event on the local Boston PBS station to see the concert and fantastic fireworks display.

Steve & Julie Cornelius