August 6, 2013

Up again at 4:30 for a swim in the pool before starting the day.  It was cold, 48 degrees, this morning.  We drove a little over an hour to Lowell, MA.  Here is the site of the Lowell National Historic Park.  This site marks the beginning of America's Industrial Revolution.  This town was the highlight of cloth production in America, using the power of the river to produce enough energy to run seven huge cotton mills.  Women worked in these factories in the 1800's, moving from farms all over the northeast.  Unfortunately by the time the great depression rolled around this town and it's mills had gone downhill.  The parks service has created some resurgence by making it a tourist stop and the town itself seems to be growing.  Once we finished the junior ranger program, we realized we were ahead of schedule and rolled east to Salem.

We made it into Salem and managed to find a parking spot on the street, right at a corner.  We walked a lot more in Salem than we planned to but we were enjoying the shops, wacky tourist traps related to witches and the people watching.  We stopped into the Salem Maritime visitor center to get our park stamps and junior ranger books.  Then we walked down to the waterfront to see the historic buildings and have some lunch.  We missed the house of seven gables, which I have heard of but don't know why it is famous.  I'll have to google that later.  Then we walked back to the camper, all of that over about 4 hours.

Our next stop, was Saugus Iron Works.  We were already a little behind our very tight schedule but we managed to do the junior ranger program, even though they ran out of badges the day before.  This was  a very cool recreation of the first iron works in the colonies in 1646.  The puritans wanted their own so that they could be self sustaining and grow their area in the new world.  There were even artifacts that they found when they dug at the site that came from the 17th century.

We only had an hour before the visitor at the Minute Man National Historic Site closed and we were getting close to quitting time for people working today.  Traffic was heavy but we managed to make it in time to complete a junior ranger and see a couple of the buildings.  Of course, that put us in traffic on the hour drive back to the campground right at rush hour.  I cooked pizza on the way and we had a nice meal right after pulling in.  A quick dip in the pool then showers and bedtime to head into Boston and Harvard tomorrow.