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Today’s agenda was to explore the byways of Rockport and boy, did we ever as you can see by how much we walked around this small town with dozens of shops that cried out for us to stop and see what else we needed to buy.

We awoke leisurely this morning as the shops did not open until 10 AM. We ate our breakfast outdoors on the porch, overlooking the ocean and could already tell it was going to be a warmer than normal day.

There is an area in Rockport on the water called Bearskin Neck( named after a real bear), which is basically a small peninsula jutting out into the sea, with two one-way streets lined with over 75 shops and a few restaurants. This was our first stop. I put enough money into the parking meter to cover three hours figuring that would be more than enough time to see all there was to see. Wrong! I had to return to add another couple of hours to the meter as there were still stores and art galleries that needed to be visited.

Most of the shops are located at ground level with living quarters on the second level, just like you see in Europe. The stores  include  jewelry (most locally designed and made),  art galleries featuring local artists’ works, boutique clothing stores, beach wear, home goods with an emphasis on the sea, logo wear shops, etc.  The shops were not the typical tourist ones you often see in such areas; the selection of items for sale were more upscale. Because of our purchases on this trip we had to buy a decent sized duffel bag to transport everything home. Luckily we found a nice beach themed one here.

 

After all the rich food we have eaten before getting here we “splurged” and had a good old American hot dog on the pier for our lunch! It tasted fabulous because it had the old fashioned “casing” that snapped when you bit into it. It hit the spot!

Renewed we spent two more hours “visiting” the rest of the 100 plus stores located in downtown Rockport! We all cried “uncle” by mid afternoon and retreated from the heat (90 plus) to the coolness of our rooms and a much needed nap.

Dinner was planned at another of Stan and Cindy’s favorites, a place near the hotel called the “Lobster Pool”. They said we had to go early as the lines of people waiting to eat there grows exponentially as the dinner hour approaches.  It is a classical lobster shack on the beach where you place your order, grab a seat out on the grass overlooking the bay and wait to get “buzzed” so you can go gather up your freshly prepared lobster, shrimp, clams or scallops. Stan and I ordered the 1.5 lb. lobsters and Cindy and Yvonne ordered shrimp plates. All the dishes came with the traditional fresh cut French fries and cole slaw. Bibs, plastic utensils and wet wipes completed the meal. The ladies raved about the freshness of the shrimp and Stan and I agreed the lobsters were tender and sweet. It was a marvelous traditional New England  meal served in an idyllic location.

We drove back into Bearskin Neck in search of dessert and found an ice cream store that featured 49 flavors. We picked our favorites and Yvonne discovered there were chairs out back on the lawn, overlooking the Rockport harbor. It was near sunset and the shadows on the lobster boats and a red fishing shack made the scene a Norman Rockwell moment. In fact that exact scene has been painted by artists for years and is known as “Motif  #1”. It was serene and we lingered long after the ice cream was gone. It marked the end of a beautiful, albeit hot day, in New England.

Tomorrow Stan plans to show us another New England gem, the town of Essex and a restaurant called “Woodmans”.  Stay tuned.

On the road by 9 AM as we had a lot to see today. Our first stop was in Salem ( population 42,800), the location of the famous witch trials of 1692. I had heard about them but knew little of what transpired that fateful year.

Salem turned out to be a much bigger attraction that I imagined and we only experienced a very small part. We watched a 40 minute movie at the US Park Service Center that relayed the events tha occurred that year. In all 14 women and 5 men were hanged and a man was crushed by rocks. Five others died in prison. As it turned out they were all innocent and  later exonerated.  The whole unfortunate event was an example of mass hysteria causing the problem. A more modern day example might be the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s or the Japanese interment during WWII.

We also toured the Salem Witches Museum which does a pretty good inactment of the events using dioramas and recorded dialogue.  There was also a display on witches through history and how the Wizard of Oz story totally changed how witches are viewed.

Although there are other items related to the era available to be seen in Salem we chose to move on as it was near lunch time and we still had a ways to go.

We chose to have lunch in Manchester By the Sea ( population 5136), hoping to see some of the locations used in the filming of the movie of the same name. Unfortunately we learned that most of the filming occurred in Gloucester, not in Manchester By the Sea. Oh well, we had a nice lunch in town before moving on to our final destination for the day, Rockport (population 6952), Massachusetts.

Stan and Cindy had discovered the lovely Emerson Inn which overlooks the Atlantic Ocean on previous trips. They loved the location, the rocking chairs on the expansive porch and the quaintness of this old hotel. Once we saw it we had to agree.

The Emerson Inn was originally called the Pigeon Cove House and dates back to 1855. Henry Thoreau brought Ralph Waldo Emerson to the Cape Ann area and Emerson fell in love with it, returning often both alone and with his family and staying at the hotel. It was later known as the Hotel Edward until 1964 when new owners renamed it in honor of its most celebrated guest. The room Emerson stayed in is still in high demand by his fans or relatives.

It is three stories high and has no elevators. Luckily the man at the desk is young and strong and brought our many suitcases to our rooms for us while we sat in rocking chairs on the porch drinking some libations to celebrate our arrival.

Dinner tonight was in downtown Rockport at another of Stan and Cindy’s favorites from previous visits: Roy Moore’s Fish Shack where you might guess the featured dish is lobster served in variety of ways and combinations. We had to stop at Stan’s favorite candy store,Tucks (here since 1929) for chocolates and taffy before calling it a night.

Oh, by,the way, although the hotel is old and the floors squeak, it is air conditioned (which is good as the next few days are expected to reach 90 degrees) and the plumbing is new and modern! All is well.

 

We awoke this morning back at the slip we left from ten days ago. It was a bright and sunny day again-looks like the weather has finally changed for the better. In fact we learned that there is a heat wave headed this way and that we should expect temperatures close to 90 degrees for a few days. Talk about seeing both sides of the weather spectrum.

The ship had all of us off by 8AM. I had arranged for Enterprise car rental to pick us up. We rented an SUV, required because of all the luggage (and purchases) we had to transport.  The question was would we also need a trailer?  Luckily we managed to squeeze it all in although there was a large suitcase situated between Yvonne and Cindy in the back seat. It was a tight fit.

Stan had planned for us to drive up the coast to Rockport, MA to stay at one of their favorite old inns: the Emerson Inn. On the way, however, we were going to stop in a few famous towns. Our first stop of the day was Marblehead, MA where we visited Abott Hall, which still serves as the town hall. There we were met by an 86 year old volunteer who spent a good 45 minutes telling us about the history of the building and some of the historical items on display there. We actually had to cut him off as I was certain he would have spent the rest of the day telling us stories. Two items of particular interest to me were:

1. George Washington in essence started the United States Navy  in 1775 by acquiring and converting the Marblehead fishing schooner, Hannah, into an armed warship.

2.  The other fascinating item was a huge painting hung in the town hall meeting chambers. It is the original painting by Archibald Willard, called “Spirit of 76” (often referred to as Yankee Doodle). It found its way here through the efforts of a local resident, General John Devereux,  a descendent of Robert Devereux ((17th century). His son is the drummer boy in the painting.

Also on display in Abbot Hall were letters from George Washington, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and John Hancock. They have quite an amazing museum of history in their town hall.

Another little known fact about Marblehead is that Elbridge Gerry, our 5th Vice President, was from Marblehead and is mostly known for his name being associated with the term “gerrymandering”.

After extracting our selves from the knowledgeable, talkative docent we went to the “old town” section of Marblehead where there are an astounding number of 16 and 17th century homes still being occupied. The meandering narrow streets are lined with beautifully painted structures from the past. There is a little shopping area of boutique shops that kept Cindy and Yvonne busy for quite awhile.

We were able to pry our wives away from the shopping area only because we were hungry and Stan wanted us to eat at a little waterfront place he had often gone to in the past called the “Barnacle”, noted for its seafood chowder and fish. We managed to snag a table on the small outside deck overlooking the Marblehead harbor, where we had a tasty lunch as the sea breezes kept us cool.

Marblehead was a delightful place to visit and loaded with history. I would love to have more time to wander around the area.

We ultimately drove to our final destination for the day, Peabody, where we had reserved rooms for the night. Tomorrow we head to Salem, Manchester by the Sea, and ultimately Rockport.

Our first visit to Cape Cod. We spent the day visiting the town at the outer tip- Provincetown. This beach town (commonly called P-Town) has a population of less than 3,000, but that grows to 60,000 during the summer as people flock to its sandy beaches. It is located on the eastern edge of the cape and is blessed with a great well-protected  harbor which was utilized by sailors over the centuries.

Provincetown’s main claim to fame is that the Pilgrims landed here first before finally settling in Plymouth because they could not find a source of fresh water near Provincetown. It was a fishing and whaling community in the 1800s and became the home of many Portuguese sailors who came here from the Azores. There is still a large contingent living in the town.

U.S. Route 6 starts here in Provincetown and goes all the way to the west coast. It ran right through our home town of Gary, Indiana.

The Provincetown Players, started in 1915, produced some prominent playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The waters off the east coast of Provincetown earned the name “oceans graveyard” as over 3,000 shipwrecks have occurred there over the past 300 years.

We were offered a trolley tour of the area. Unfortunately, it began to rain as we left and I was unable to get many photos along our route. It did stop about half way through the trip and I was able to record the rest of the trip.

After the tour Stan and Cindy went in search of antiques and Yvonne and I spent several hours walking the main downtown street sightseeing, shopping and having lunch at a beach shack that had gotten high ratings by Yelp.  Our first stop was visitng the Portuguese bakery recommended by our tour guide to have a “flipper”, a Portuguese pastry called malassada, a fried dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar. It reminded us of Indian frybread. The bakery also made “pasteis de belem”, a favorite custard tart of the Portuguese that I had learned to love when we visited Portugal.

Tomorrw we will be back in Boston and so this evening after dinner we had to repack our luggage and make room for all the items we purchased along the way.

The day broke sunny and bright and we were ecstatic!  It also happens to be our 54th weeding anniversary. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that day in 1963 we marched down the aisle in Gary, Indiana and began that wonderful adventure called marriage. I am grateful I have Yvonne along for that journey.

How did Martha’s Vineyard gets it name?  The general feeling is that British explorer, Bartholomew Gosnold, named it after his daughter, Martha. There were wild grapes on the island whichever gave rise to the rest of the name. Now you k ow the rest of the story.

This is the second day in a row with nice weather! The tour offered today was a sightseeing bus tour of part of the island with a stop in the largest village on the island, Edgartown.

The first surprise was our bus. It was surplussed from an army base in Kentucky, God knows how many years ago. It ran smoothly so we had no complaints. Our driver and guide, Karen, was simply a “hoot”. She is a native so, obviously she regaled us with local stories and humor. She dropped us off in the small village of Edgartown for local shopping and sightseeing. She said she was going home to hang out her laundry (no dryers in these parts) and would be back for us in 1.5 hours.

Edgartown  was lovely: not very large (population 4,067); one main street with many small shops; surrounding streets with very old, the colonial houses with white picket fences, some of which were B&Bs and others occupied by families. It was truly a Norman Rockwell kind of place. We shopped a little; admired the old homes, including the one owned by the sea captain of the whaling vessel Acushnet, the ship Herman Melville sailed on and was the inspiration of Moby Dick. I would have loved to have spent more time wandering those back streets and taking it all in.

On the way back to the ship we drove through the small village of Oak Bluffs, where there was an Methodist summer camp which consisted of dozens of beautiful 19th century gingerbread homes. Many still exist and they are lovely.

After lunch we both went to listen to a lecture by a local writer, Cynthia Riggs, who at the age of 68 went back to school to study writing and published her first murder mystery at the age of 70. She was also a “hoot” telling us tales of her life as a sea captain; finding and getting reunited (and married) to a work colleague who she had not seen in 50 some years. She told us how she incorporates people (anonymously) she knows on the island in her novels and conveniently murders off those she dislikes. People are always trying to figure out who she is portraying in her stories!

After today I think Martha’s Vineyard makes my favorite places list.

Our first really nice weather day since the trip began! It started out party cloudy but by mid-day there was not a cloud in the sky and we all thoroughly enjoyed being out in the sunshine. We even got to lounge on the outdoor deck of the ship after we returned from our visit to the town.

Newport:  Elegant homes dot the landscape; big sailing yachts bob in the harbor; private beach clubs with member only signs line the beaches; home of the international tennis hall of fame; and  site of the famous Newport Jazz Festival. This is the playground of the very rich and famous.

Newport was founded in 1639 and currently is home to about 25,000 people. It was and is the summer destination for the rich. It is also the home of the Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the most elegant college I have ever seen: Salve Regina, a small Catholic school with dormitories housed in a series of former mansions bought by or donated to the university by former owners. John F Kennedy married Jackie Bouvier in Newport. Newport is noted also as the site of past America’s Cup yacht races.

Our trolley bus tour took us past the summer home of President Eisenhower, the family estate of Jackie Kennedy’s family, the mansion being restored by Larry Ellison (Oracle), and the former home of the Vanderbilts, the Breakers. We soon learned that each of the grand homes had a name, not simply an address. Most estates were really hard to see as massive hedges and fences keep them from clear view. Newport truly emerged as the poster boy of the “gilded society” of the early 20th century. As is becoming more common the estates have become costly to maintain and many have been sectioned and sold as elegant condos.

Our tour included a visit to the Breakers where we took the audio tour of the mansion. It is definitely “over the top” in decor and opulence. The mansion is owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County who also owns 5-6 other such mansions which have been restored and are open to the public to visit, at a reasonable price. $35 will get you admission to all of them which seems like a bargain to me. We spent almost 1.5 hours visitng the Breakers before moving on with our touring trolley.

The tour returned us to the ship through the downtown area so we could get a feel for it, as after lunch we rode the ship’s launch to the town pier to do more sightseeing and a bit of shopping.

11,000 steps later we were back on the ship, sitting outside on the aft deck soaking up the sun. It was the first time this trip we were able to do that.

The entertainment this evening was a local trio of women who paid a tribute to the wartime songs that  the Andrew Sisters sang. They were quite good and sounded just like the Andrew Sisters. They did a nice tribute to all the veterans in the crowd by singing all the different service songs (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard).

We managed to miss the worst of the weather last night (mostly wind) by diverting through an inner channel which brought us safety to Fall River without the guests suffering another bout of seasickness.

We had originally planned to dock in New Bedford but the captain was unable to secure dockage space and Fall River was a back-up. I was a bit bummed as I had hoped to see the whaling museum there. The good news is that New Bedford is only a 20-30 minute bus ride from Fall River and the ship arranged for a bus to take us to the whaling museum this morning.

Fall River was founded in 1803 and currently has a population of about 89,000. By 1811 the first textile mill was in operation. The industry grew during the 1800s.  At one time Fall River was the leading textile manufacturer in the US and # 2 in the world.  Population peaked at 120,000 by 1920.   As we all know the industry and the jobs eventually left the area and the United States. Today we saw a lot of still empty buildings left by the textile industry as the area is trying to adjust to the new economy and rebuild.

New Bedford is 15 miles from Fall River and was one of the two major whaling ports in the US back in the 19th century (the other was Nantucket). It now has a population of 95,000 down from a peak of 120,000 in the 1920s. In the mid 1800s it was one of the major whaling capital in the US.  It also became a textile manufacturing city in the 1880s and employed over 30,000 people in the industry at one time.  It was the home of Wamsutta, a name we all knew. Commercial fishing also was important to the area until the fishing grounds got overfished in the 1990s.

As is typical there was not enough time to really appreciate all that was on display at the whaling museum, which was extensive. Of special note is their exhibit of scrimshaw and a 1/2 scale replica of a famous whaling vessel, Lagoda. We saw a movie describing the history of whaling in the area before touring the museum on our own. I enjoyed seeing displays of equipment whalers used to both catch and process the blubber from the whales. I also enjoyed seeing some of the original written logs from some of the whaling expeditions of the era. Needless to say the life of a whaler was dangerous and many lost their lives during the process.

Across the street from the museum is a famous church (called a bethel) where whalers came to pray before leaving on the always dangerous whaling expeditions. In that church is the pew where Herman Melville sat and a replica of the ship shaped pulpit mentioned in the book, Moby Dick.

In the afternoon I walked over to the nearby Battleship Cove where there are several naval vessels on display, including the battleship Massachusetts, several original PT boats, a submarine, the Joseph Kennedy destroyer and a Russian corvette. I was interested in seeing both the PT boats and the battleship as I had seen the others before. I was impressed with the enormity of the battleship. I wandered below deck and almost got lost its vastness. The two PT boats were larger than I imagined (80 feet) and made of wood which surprised me. Most were burned after WWII so these are valuable vessels. You cannot board them but there are viewing ports on the sides to allow viewing of the inside.They were fast and effective and played an important role in the Pacific campaign.

Tonight the duo of Kenny (guitar) and Lee (piano) put on a show playing famous songs from the 50s and 60s. They are very entertaining and even Yvonne joined me for their “concert” and quasi sing-a-long. I multi-tasked and wrote this blog as I listened to their music.

For all you linguists out there, it is ” Glau Stir”, not “Glau Chester”. End of lesson. We have left Maine and are now plying the coastline of Massachusetts.

It was cloudy, quite cool and very breezy as we arrived at 7:30 AM in the harbor. ‘Tis definitely sweater weather today. In fact the weather so far has been darn right cool. We should have brought our puffy jackets. This part of the country may have shorter summers than Seattle!

It will be a short visit as our ship will leave right after lunch so there is only time for a quick bus tour of the city.  The weather is bad enough that they are even cancelling the other offered tour-a ride on a lobster schooner out in the sound.

This was to be the first port where we were to actually be at a dock, but when we arrived we found the dockage space was being used by another local boat so guess who had to dock off shore…again! This then threw off our tour schedule for the morning and we had to rush through our visit to the local small maritime museum which focuses on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Preserve off shore. There were also sections on the history of Gorton seafood (remember those fish sticks you ate when you were young), and the evolution of methods to protect boat bottoms, which ultimately led to the development of bottom paint here in Gloucester. The museum also is restoring the 1849 marine railway, which was and still is used to haul ships out of the water for maintenance. The “sled-like”structure is powered by a steam engine located in the building next to the rail system.

We then had a bus tour of the local area. We learned that although Gloucester is a famous name it really is a blue collar town that relied heavily on the fishing  industry. In the early 1900s there would have been over 400 fishing schooners moored on the harbor, working the offshore fishing banks and having lucrative careers. Today there are about 20 active fish trawlers. The fishing industry here is a disaster.

We stopped at the famous statue dedicated to seafaring men and those who died at sea. There are plaques naming the some 5,400 men who have died at sea over the years. Of the 1,000 ships that have been lost, 265 lost all hands on board. From the period of 1860-1906, 660 ships sank with a loss of 3,880 men. A single storm in 1862 claimed 15 schooners and 120 lives. Another storm in 1879 took the lives of 159 men. The life of a fisherman is a dangerous one.

We saw the local establishments that were part of the story of the “Perfect Storm”. The trip then took us through a neigborhood of more expensive homes on the seashore, a quick visit to the town of Rockport and all its shops, and then back to the ship so we could depart.

Late yesterday the captain indicated there was to be yet another change in our itinerary. Turns out New Bedford could not give us moorage space so now we will be headed to Fall River, MA after we leave Gloucester.

We began the day with a narrated bus tour of the town. One of the interesting differences here compared to Camden is that the big homes owned by the sea captains were not located on the seashore. They were located away from the shore. I am not sure why.

Perhaps it was because the shoreline was very industrialized with ship builders and processing plants for limestone. The local saying is “Camden by the sea; Rockland by the smell”.  As it turns out there are a tremendous number of limestone quarries in the area and the mined product was brought to the shore for further processing and then shipped to other parts of the world. We were driven past quite a few old quarries which are now filled with water and have become local swimming and fishing holes. Some quarries are 1/2 mile deep. I saw pictures of how they looked when mined in the 1800s by hand and horses used to carry the product out of the quarries. Limestone was the big business in Rockland.

Not being a big town (again about 5,000 people) the tour did not last very long. We were then driven the the now famous Farnsworth & Wyeth Museum where a docent led us on a guided tour of the exhibits. It turns out that Mrs. Farnsworth left several millions of dollars to the city after she passed in the 1930s to create an art museum. Later the Wyeth family donated many of Andrew Wyeth’s artwork to the Museum because his family had a summer home in the area and most of his watercolors  featured subjects in the area. I was amazed to see many of his pencil sketches he made prior to making a finished watercolor. Those sketches were works of art themselves-detailed in every way. Many of his watercolor originals are located here but his most recognized painting ” Christina’s World”  is owned by the NY Metropolitan Art Museum. Andrew’ s son, Jamie, also has a summer place here and I would imagine some of his work will eventually end up in this museum some day. Ironically 2017 is the 100th anniversary of Andrew Wyeth’s birthday and there is a special exhibit on display. If you recall we saw the special 100 year exhibit of John F. Kennedy a few days ago. There was really not enough time to really experience the museum as we were scheduled to meet at Sharp’s Point for our special group lobster boil.

We were greeted by a 4 piece folk band in a big tent with picnic seating. Nearby was a big wood fire blazing away with huge pots of boiling water. As we arrived the staff began throwing in dozens of lobsters and topping them with mussels, corn on the cob, seaweed and burlap. Twenty minutes later we were called to collect a plate of steamed lobster, corn on the cob, melted butter, mussels, cole slaw and potato salad. Ship staff showed us how to clean the lobster. Bibs were supplied and were needed as it became a messy proposition getting that delicious lobster meat out of the shell. Staff wandered around offering seconds to those who wanted them. Needless to say the lobster was tender and sweet. I was surprised at how good and mild the mussels tasted as they were fairly large in size. It was a wonderful, abiet messy meal.

Some people left to go to a transportation museum in town while we stayed around to visit with our host, Captain Jim Sharp, who proceeded to give us a narrated tour of his personal maritime museum that he built here. We all were blown away by the quality of the exhibits he has put together on boat building in olden days, lobster fishing equipment, sea navigation, tools used for building boats, ship models, and historical pictures of famous schooners built in the area. Captain Jim loves to tell stories about the history of maritime technology and his time spent as a schooner builder and sailor. He would have talked for hours had we not had to return to our ship. His maritime museum is truly world class. It was an impressive afternoon.

 

We returned reluctantly to our mother ship where we were treated to an after dinner lecture by Sam Ladley, the historian who led us on the walking tour in Camden. His subject tonight was on Coastal Maine and the lobster industry. The gentlemen is a native and a wealth of knowledge about the area and its history.

 

Maine was originally populated by Europeans who wanted to farm. Unfortunately they quickly learned that there is no soil here (typically 2-3 inches); it got pushed into the ocean during the ice age. People had to turn to fishing. Centuries ago fishing was abundant because of the currents and continental shelf. Early reports said you could “walk across the water on the back of fish”, but, as expected, the area eventually was overfished. The famous Grand Banks and much of the area is closed for fishing as they try to rebuild the fish stock. That will take generations to do.

Sam explained how Maine prospered in the 1820-1830 era because of its ship building expertise and all those trees. Not surprisingly he said at one time there was not a tree left within 20 miles of the coastline; they were all cut down for boats  and for firewood. Eventually the industrial revolution and steam power killed the schooner business here.

Unfortunately, it has been downhill for Maine since those days. One very bright spot however is the lobster industry. Lobster harvest has grown from 20 million pounds/yr to 150 million pounds/yr, mainly because the loss of cod (because of overfishing) permits more lobster eggs to hatch. Sam explained how there is rigid  self-policing by the local lobster fisherman to conserve and maintain this family oriented industry. Yes, there are commercial lobstermen but they are tightly controlled and monitored. Again we could have listened for much longer than he was willing to speak.

The entire day was special- full of new experiences and knowledge.