Okay, the routine is definitely starting to drag on me. Get up, shower, get kids up, get everyone ready, shove the same breakfast into your mouth as you had the last 5 days, then go load up the bag on top of the roof, strap it down. then drive for X hours... Monotonous, to say the least. We left New Hampshire in our dust and headed to Portland, Maine. Maine (and Vermont, and New Hampshire, really) is really quite beautiful. It's lush, green grass and trees with plenty of rolling hills pretty much everywhere we went.
Our first stop today was the Portland Head Lamp and Fort Williams Park. The Portland Head Lamp is a beautiful old lighthouse that was commissioned by George Washington way back in the day, and the lighthouse is still in active use to this day. It's been fully automatic and computer controlled since 1991. There was a small little museum at the base of the lighthouse that had some history and a woman working the admission counter who was full of fun little tidbits of information. We posed for a few pictures, let the kids run in the park, and then climbed back in the car.
About 5 minutes up the road is a beautiful old, late 1800s mansion called Victoria Mansion. I had a meeting I rescheduled from yesterday that happened to fall right when we got to the mansion, so "K" took the kids in while I waited in the car. I can't tell you what it's like inside, but it seemed nice? The gift shop was lovely at the very least.
A bit farther of a drive was the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, MA. That's right, we hit state #21! We're cruising right along now. The Salem Witch Museum is one "K" and I hit when we were here back in 2008, but we wanted to take the kids since we had a little time today. It had a bit better production value than I remembered, and their gift shop certainly expanded to accommodate some of the pop culture success of the recent Hocus Pocus reboot. The show/tour was a bit on the expensive side, but presented the information in a fun and engaging way while also honoring the innocent victims. The second half of the tour included some interesting historical timelines as well. PLus, hilarious bathroom signs!
Our hotel is in Danvers, a suburb of the Boston area. We're staying here 2 nights, and they have free laundry, so we hauled EVERYTHING in from the car. We managed to get it all in only 2 trips using the luggage cart. Got the kids fed and in bed, ready to start the whole routine (minus the roof bag!) over again tomorrow!