Mass.-- East Coast Summer I

Usually when I travel east, I have a week, two at the most. I run around like crazy, visiting family and maybe a friend or two.

This time, after taking a month to drive across the country, I had almost 3 months and no set itinerary--the luxury to go places I'd always wanted to see and also to follow my whims.

I unloaded my car and set up residence at my parents' house in the Boston area. But I was never there more than a week at a time. I visited friends in several states. This journal has the Massachusetts parts.

Quick Tips:

Massachusetts has historic sites on every corner. Look for plaques on houses that show the year they were built and who they were built by. You may remember names from your grade-school history books.

Best Way To Get Around:

The Boston area is, in my opinion, the most difficult place in the country to drive. This is due to streets laid out hodgepodge, the lack of adequate signs, and the cutthroat attitude of the drivers. Try to avoid driving in Boston if at all possible.

In other nearby areas, like the North Shore area, where I stayed (and where I grew up and learned to drive), the driving style is also aggressive, but it's not bad when you get used to it. Don't be surprised if someone edges out one lane at a time for a left turn, blocking traffic until she can get where she wants to be.

Also, be aware of the rotaries, where you have to go around in a circle, merging with traffic from all directions to keep going forward or to turn. They can be a little unnerving, but you get the hang of it after a few times.

We wanted some coffee and a light lunch, and my friend wanted to check out this new cafe she'd heard about, so we went to Esselon. It hadn't been open yet for more than a few weeks, but most of the tables were filled. The crowd was mixed, college students and the middle-aged, casual and friendly in the local counter-cultural way. We ordered our food at the counter, then went to sit on the patio, where they brought it to us. The patio overlooked the garden and was a very pleasant place to sit.

My tea came in a small cast iron pot on a tray, presented beautifully. My friend's cappuccino was a work of art! Both tasted great. We also split a bowl of soup and a sandwich, both of which were excellent.

One of the owners, a very nice woman, was walking around checking to see that things were going okay. She answered my friend's questions about how the place started. All in all, the place felt like what it is, a cafe where the local community can gather.

Essalon Cafe serves breakfast, lunch, and coffee. The weekend brunch menu looked good, and I hope to be able to try it out another time.

The Grapevine is the place to go for a special occasion. Its food should satisfy the most refined palate. I rarely go to such upscale restaurants, and this one was memorable.

You can tell it's not an ordinary restaurant when you walk in. It's not all that large, and it has a cozy feeling, as if you were in a private club. The wait staff is attentive, happy to explain the menu and excellent at pacing the meal.

There were six of us, and we split several salads and appetizers, which were all very tasty. I was happy to see that there were more than a couple of vegetarian choices. I had a delicious moussaka that practically melted in my mouth. Everyone else was just as pleased with their food, which included halibut and pasta with veal meatballs.

We decided to split three desserts. The surprise was the bread pudding with caramel sauce, which was incredibly good.

The Grapevine is an outstanding restaurant. It has built a great reputation and lives up to it splendidly.

Rockport is a small town on the Atlantic. Its quaint, old New England nature has made it a draw for visitors, and as a result, it has become a tourist town.

We wandered through the picturesque streets. Bought salt water taffy. Browsed in trendy yet rustic shops. Ate clam and corn chowders from cardboard containers at a restaurant's upstairs patio. Then had ice cream from a small ice cream parlor. Then we walked and sat on a pier and watched the water.

If you go beyond the tourist area, you can still climb on the shoreline rocks that give the town its name and sit in quiet contemplation watching the waves.

Hammond Castle Museum looks like a medieval castle but was built in the 1920s by John Hammond, an inventor, as his home and workplace. It is still furnished with his large collection of medieval artifacts.

You can wander the grounds, see the beautiful garden, look out over the ocean, and browse the gift shop for free. I have done this several times--it's a good place to take visitors who want to see area sights.

There's a fee to tour the castle, which I have never done. The front no-fee rooms contain some period furnishings and displays of armor. I am sure the rooms on the tour are constructed and furnished with plenty of attention to detail.

The ladies' room has a wall of windows with the best view I've ever seen from a bathroom--ocean, framed perfectly by the lace curtains.

The castle lends itself well to ghostly pursuits and has special events around Halloween.

At the very most, you might spend 2 hours at the castle--1 hour could be plenty. So it's a good idea to combine the trip with other sightseeing. The area is beautiful; driving to the castle, you have good views of historic houses, the Massachusetts woods, and (depending on your route) the coastline. The towns of Gloucester and Rockport are both good nearby places for sightseeing.

For more information about the castle, look here.

Hampton Beach is a great place to spend a summer afternoon with the family. While I was in Massachusetts, I was called on to entertain my visiting teenage niece and nephew (cousins who are not the best of friends) for a day. I vaguely remembered Hampton Beach, less than an hour's drive away, and decided to check it out.

Arcades, shops, snack stands, seafood restaurants, and small motels line the Boardwalk. The long white beach is just across the street. Both are filled with people on a sunny summer day. It looks pretty much the same as it did 40 years ago - archetypal 20th century Northeast American beach resort town (though the henna tattoo artists are a recent addition).

With some negotiation, we managed to agree on things to do. First, we walked all the way to the north end of the boardwalk, maybe a mile. By the time we finished, we were hungry. We wanted to sit down to eat, so we bypassed the snack stands and got some excellent pizza at a small place on a side street. We all like arcades, so we played in the Funarama for a while, then cashed in our tickets for souvenirs.

Finally, we were ready for the beach. We crossed the street, and some of us got our bare feet into the sand. The weather was warm - it was August - but about 10 degrees cooler than Mass. The beach was dotted with bright beach umbrellas, and full of people of all ages, sunbathing, hauling coolers, and frolicking near or in the water. Seagulls swooped and found plenty of crumbs. We didn't get more than our ankles wet; the water was chilly!

Back on the boardwalk, we stopped at one of the candy shops and got some taffy and a few chocolates. The day was a success - both young people acknowledged having a good time. It was a Wednesday, and we were sad to have to leave and miss the weekly firework show (at dusk). There are other events too, and the Hampton Beach Casino has shows with big(gish)-name bands.

The Ipswich River Sanctuary is owned and run by the Mass. Audubon Society. It has a visitor center, a summer kids' camp, and many miles of trails through the woods and wetlands.

I've walked several times on the trails. This time, I should have called in advance and asked about bugs. Mosquitoes were all over the place and I got all bitten up. The gnats were so thick that I had to brush them away from my face and eyes with every step--I don't know what I'd have done without sunglasses.

The previous owners of the property did some interesting landscaping. The Rockery consists of rocks piled into formations including a bridge over the trail. Elsewhere, there are rhododendrons and other plants that were originally cultivated but now grow wild, including some unusual trees.

Many people like to visit here with birdseed. When you see a chickadee, you can put a seed on your hand and hold it out and wait. If you keep still, the chickadee will land on your hand to take it. No time for that on this visit, though--the bugs kept us moving fast. We even saw a black snake right on the path and couldn't stop to look at it properly because of the bugs.

On trails that go around the ponds, I saw stumps of trees that had been felled by beavers, and could see some of the beaver dams in the water.

The Sanctuary is the kind of place that you come to again and again. You revisit favorite places and take trails you haven't tried before. And, if the weather's been rainy lately, you call first for a report on the insect situation.

Minuteman National Park is where people and places from your school history books come alive in front of your eyes. If, like me, you think history is a dull subject, a visit to the park will remind you that it is about real people like us. The people of the Minuteman era lived through events, including the American Revolution, that made our way of living possible. In fact, the Revolution started here with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The park's web site says:

Minute Man encompasses the story of an evolution of the ideals of freedom and liberty, new notions of cultural independence and citizen responsibility. These ideals led to an American literary revolution the following century, introducing Concord authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The ideals of both the American Revolution and 19th-century literary revolution continue today and serve as an inspiration to people throughout the world.

The park is big and has several visitor centers and other attractions. You can walk on the 5-mile trail, but we drove between attractions and parked in three different lots.

Our first stop was the main visitor center, where we saw a 25-minute multimedia presentation about the battle of Lexington and Concord and the events leading up to it. It was very well done and worth seeing. It set the tone for the rest of the visit. You'd see a plaque on the trail telling what happened there and relate it to people and events in the presentation.

Next we drove to the Hartwell House, which belonged to a family mentioned in the presentation. Two docents in period costume were available to tell the area’s stories and answer questions. A musket-firing demonstration was scheduled for later, so we missed it.

Then we drove to the North Bridge area, with a wooden bridge over the river to a Minute Man statue. Another docent was available there. It was adjacent to the Old Manse, which had a museum and gift shop that we didn’t see. The Old Manse was the Emerson home, the family of which included Ralph Waldo Emerson, and excerpts from his poems were engraved on the statue and on signs.

After we left the part, we drove through Concord and to Lexington. We stopped at the National Heritage Museum. It is free and owned and run by the Masons. It had interesting exhibits of clocks and other houseware from colonial times on, an exhibit of photos of musicians, and a small gift shop.

Boston's Holocaust Memorial is small and deceptively simple looking. The six glass monoliths rise into the sky. Engraved on them are six million numbers, like the numbers tattooed on the people who were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps. Next to the path that passes under the towers, information about the Holocaust is inscribed in rock. The memorial gives a sense of solemnity, dignity, and grief over a black part of the world's history. It is located near Faneuil Hall and is on Boston's Freedom Trail.

Okay, I was just driving around, exploring the area with my teenage niece and nephew. And, well, I was lost. We saw the sign for the art colony and decided, why not?

Rocky Neck is the oldest art colony in the USA. It is right on the water, in a very calm inlet. It's a residential neighborhood with narrow roads. You can see many small galleries in houses and a few larger buildings. They show not only paintings, but sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, and various crafts. The atmosphere is homey and rustic yet sophisticated.

I have to admit that we only actually went into one gallery. The artist, who was sitting outside with her friends, welcomed us and let us browse at our leisure.

Next door was an ice cream shop, with the local (and first-rate) Richardson's ice cream. We took our cones to the deck over the water and leaned on the railing. The scenery was pure northern New England coastal small town. The water was glassy and clear, and five swans were sunning and swimming lazily. Ahh, perfect.

For more information, including events and a listing of the galleries, look here.

There's something for everyone at Salem Willows. When I was a teenager, we used to go play on coin-operated pool tables, which are no longer there. But the game arcades and kiddie rides are there, and the food stands. There's even a tiny miniature golf course, which we played on a recent visit.

But you don't have to even look at the amusements if you're not it the mood. The biggest attraction is the ocean: the salt air, the pier, the rocks and beaches, the boats coming in and out of the marina. You can also walk through the park area, under the willow and other trees.