New Bedford, Plymouth Rock and Boston - Keels go to Canada day 10

 We took it slow this morning. We wanted to enjoy this huge room we were blessed with. We ate breakfast and took our time packing up.
Check out this video of our room.  The file was too large to upload directly in the blog so I had to upload it elsewhere. Password is bigroom 

One of the neat things we learned at the Bureau of Engraving was that US currency is behind other countries with labeling money with a tactile feature for the blind. They are working to fix that with the next bill design. We pulled out our Canadian money to check it out. Sure enough, you feel raised dots. By the end of the investigation the kids could close their eyes, feel the bill, and tell the difference between the Canadian $5 & $10.

 

Packing up is always a lot of fun. We pretty well had a full cart every day when we went in and out a hotel. We only had a few places that did not provide carts, those places we would tell the kids only put what they need for the night in their backpack. I'm thinking their blanket and favorite sleep toy and leave all the crayons, coloring books, extra toys that were smuggled in... The kids though, they thought necessities were the 27 stuffed animals mom didn't know made it on the trip with us.

  

Some of you remember me posting that I found two Chick Fil A free sandwich cards on the van while in a parking lot. This was where that happened. So we had the crazy cool blessing of a huge room, then this! God was smiling on us that day for sure!

 

Guess where we ate lunch?

Our national park stop of the day was at New Bedford National Historical Park. This area was really neat, roads were made of cobblestone and it had a very historic atmosphere. Of course the kids completed their Jr Ranger program. Once again, video was too large to directly upload on the blog. Check it out here with the password: keelkids

 Chloe loved the ships.

 

 

 

 Our next stop was a short one in Plymouth to see the rock. Dad wanted to make sure he backed up far enough. He did.

 

 So here is the rock. It was a bit anticlimactic with all of the other things we have seen on the trip, and had to go through security for. This rock was just sitting out there, no metal detectors or guards. I was probably more interested in it than the kids though, I always loved the story of the first Thanksgiving, the Mayflower, and William Bradford. It was one of the few parts of history I enjoyed learned about as a kid, along with Paul Reveres midnight ride and Virginia Dare and the lost colony. As an adult I love American History, but as a kid, did not care for it at all.

 We enjoyed seeing all of the boats and the simply beautiful scenery of the area.

 

 

 By this point in the trip we had all lost our minds, let nothing surprise you.

 You can't see Sarah very well photo bombing this photo... but she is behind the lobster

 There she is!

 As I said, let nothing surprise you.

 

 I have no idea why they posed like this.

What, did you think we actually expected Abigail to be looking?

 Our landing point for the night was near Boston. We drove into Boston to eat dinner. Ended up paying $20 to park just to eat dinner...

 

 

 

 

Lukes Lobster was good food but fairly expensive considering the portion sizes but we were in a large city and it is sea food. The kids were not super crazy about it at first but did decide the liked clam chowder.

After dinner we headed to our hotel, which was outside of Boston. I may have missed a direction when telling Paul where to turn so we took a bit of a scenic route but we ended up making it to the hotel anyway, only a few minutes extra. 

The plan for tomorrow was to go back into Boston to Boston Historical Park, if we thought we could handle being in a crowded area again. You see, both Paul and I are introverted, and for me, NYC just about did me in for crowds. In order to recover, I need slow paced and few people. It did not appear Boston would offer that to me.