2011 Vacation, Days 5 and 6

I think perhaps the clue was too obscure.  Is this one maybe easier?

The first pic at the end of the last post was taken at the Bennington Monument.  The last picture and this sign are at the Bennington Battlefield.  Two different places, in two different states actually.  The Battle of Bennington was fought over a storehouse of weapons and supplies in Bennington, Vermont.   The English soldiers found out about it, and thought they had better take control of it.  The Americans thought differently, and met up with them about 10 miles west of Bennington, in New York near Walloomsac.  Our forces were mostly militia and a group you may have heard of called the Green Mountain Boys.  We won, and won hard.

The boys had quite a time running all around the battlefield.  Chris did not much like the downhill part:

Since I was still sort of recovering, that was all we did that day.  We drove back to the resort, and started getting ready for the next day.

Day 6 we mostly packed and drove to Boston.  Our original plan was to leave fairly early, and get there with enough time to see Salem, the Concord Bridge, and walk about 1/2 the Freedom Trail.  As I was moving really slowly and still not wanting to quite overdo it, we got to Boston with just a little bit of daylight left, and only really had time for the bridge.

We drove out there, parked, and discovered 2 very cool things.  First, just about the best climbing tree EVER:

And secondly, it was chilly.  Quite chilly.  Nathan got to try on the hat his Auntie made him out of leftovers from his blanket, which I still need to take pics of and post on here, but that’s another post entirely.

The Park was pretty cool.  I’m ashamed to admit at first I didn’t realize what the big deal was.   I took a chance and asked Steve what the bridge was, and hoped he wouldn’t go into one of his looooooooooooooong explanations.

I was lucky.  He briefly told me it was the site of “The Shot Heard Round the World” and where the first battle of the Revolutionary War took place.   “Oh, THAT bridge,” I replied.  I should have waited, ’cause this was right before the bridge (you can click on the pic to embiggen it):

The bridge itself was not that much to look at.

On the other side of the bridge though, is this:

Here’s a close-up (again, embiggen it to read):

And this:

I thought that was rather cool.

At that point, we were all getting rather hungry, and my appetite was finally returning, so we found someplace to eat, and headed back to our hotel in Boston, which was amazing, and got rested up for the next day.  Freedom Trail, here we come!

PS. – One quick note about the hotel we stayed at – it was quite modern and hip.  Very hip.  Dork that I am, I pretty much feel out of place almost anywhere I go, so perhaps you can imagine, if you click on the hotel link, how uphip I felt in there with all those 20-somethings.  That said, the rooms were awesome, the front desk folks were very helpful, and the stay was all in all very nice.  I’d totally stay there again.  But what happened was odd none the less.

At bedtime we realized that we had left a few things in the car, so I sent David down there with the keys (to get away from his brothers for a few minutes) to retrieve Christopher’s Scout and the toothbrushes.  He came back up with a weird look on his face.  I asked him if there was anything wrong, and he brushed it off.  Then we realized that we forgot something else, one of Christopher’s fuzzy blankets, so this time I went down to get it.

Now, click on that hotel link again and look at the pics of the night time lounge.  Imagine that filled with loud music, lots of people drinking pretty drinks, and me, carrying a fuzzy blanket through there.   Yeah, real hip.  If there’s one thing less hip than carrying a fuzzy blanket through a bar/lounge, it’d be if you were a 13 year old boy carrying a toothbrush and a stuffed animal through a bar/lounge.

I went and apologized to David.  Poor kid.

2011 Vacation Details, Day 3, 4, and part of 5

So, when I left off, I was alternating between hot sweaty flashes and shivering chills at the cabin at KOA.  Other than that, it was a nice cabin.  Could have used a slightly thicker mattress pad thing though.  But that’ s just me.

I forgot to include these pictures of the boys making their beds.

That’s David up there making Patrick’s bed for him.  And below is Russ making his own.  We had a pack and play thing for Chris and a little foldable bed for Nate.

I woke up feeling halfways alright, considering I hadn’t slept well at all.  Silly me, I thought I was through the worst of it.

Everyone else got up that next morning and ate breakfast outside at the little picnic table in the cabin’s front yard.  Christopher ended up falling through and banged one side of his head on the side of the table, then the other side of his head on the seat part as he fell through.  He was not at all pleased.

We loaded up the car and took off for the Berkshires.  Most of the rest of the day is sort of a blur.  I had remembered that it was WWKIP day, and one of the sock forums I belong to on Ravelry was doing a WWKIP Day Scavenger Hunt.  I participated last year, and it was quite fun.  The point is to knit on a sock during the day, and take pictures of your sock doing things or in certain situations, and you get points.  Steve offered to make a little detour up to Niagara Falls, since one of the big point-getters was to get a pic of your sock with a well-known internationally-recognizable landmark.  I just was feeling so icky by that point that I just wanted to get to the resort.  Steve keep saying, “Are you sure you don’t want to go to get a picture?”  I finally convinced him that I didn’t care, as I hadn’t even started a sock for that day yet.  You got points for actually starting that day as well, so I had waited.  I thought that if I felt better, we’d get some pics at the resort, and submit those.

Turns out we got to the resort just before some rain hit, and Nathan was hungry, so I went inside with him and fed him while the big boys ran back and forth unloading the entire car.  They finished up literally just before the storm came through.  We hadn’t had a chance to stop anywhere for groceries yet, so we thought it’d be best to order out some food.  At this point the boys were starving hungry, I had the chills so bad I was sitting on a chair, wearing a sweater jacket I brought, and was still shivering.  Steve brought me a blanket, and I was still shivering.

The pizza place we had a brochure for offered a little bit of everything, so he got a pizza for the boys, a lasagne for him, and I got a cheese calzone and a bowl of French onion soup, thinking that the broth would warm me up.  Steve ran out real quick to go pick it up, and it was good.  I could only eat about 1/2 the bowl of soup though.  The boys inhaled the pizza, Steve ate about 1/2 his ginormous lasagne, and my entire calzone went in the fridge for later.  And we all went to bed.

The next morning, Day 4 of the vacation, I woke up feeling like death.  I just felt awful – shivering, a fever of 102 (I took my temp at some point, using the thermometer I brought in case one of the kids got sick – ha!), sweats, chills, thirsty, but the gatorade made me throw up.  It was too sicky sweet.  Most of the day was a blur.  I didn’t leave the bed but to go to the bathroom a few times.  Steve would bring Nate in to me to feed, I’d nurse him, and Steve would take him back out again.  At some point, he got Chris down for a nap, and took the older boys out to get some groceries, leaving Nate on the bed so I could reach him if he woke up.

A while later, he came home with the groceries, and then went on to fix supper for us all.  By suppertime, I managed to eat for the first time that day: about 3 bites of chicken, 1/2 of  a new red potato, and 1 baby carrot.  Then I went back to bed.

Turns out the boys had pretty much spent the day watching a Cake Boss marathon.  This information will explain what happened on day 10.  What a fun way to start your summer vacation, right?

By Monday, day 5, I started to feel human again, except for a little case of cabin fever.  I wanted to go somewhere, but no where that would involve me seeing anyone, cause I wasn’t in the mood to put any make up on.  And I’m one of those girls who takes about 2 1/2 minutes to do my makeup too.  Steve suggested we go to this yarn shop he found.  I said no.

Read that again.  I said no to yarn shopping.  I think that’s perhaps when how sick I was really hit him.  Not that he thought I was faking or anything, but dang, how sick do I have to be to not want to go yarn shopping?

Here’s 2 pictures of where we ended up going.  See if you can figure out where we went.  No cheating by looking back at the itinerary either.

The next post will give you the answer…