Day # 10

Kaylyn is making pumpkin pancakes for our dinner. I am hereby noting that we did have lunch again today when we moved to our next campsite. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Our day started with our next electrical challenge. We are having great weather, we are healthy, the truck is running well and Miss Marshmallow is as cooperative as ever – and continuing to solicit attention wherever we go. So our complaints are only of annoyances. I mentioned the first day every time we plugged Miss Marshmallow into my cousin’s house the GFI popped. Apparently the several rainstorms dampened her systems. Once she dried out, we had electricity.

Our next challenge involved our three-week-old electric ice chest. The great thing about an electric ice chest is that you are not constantly retrieving food that has been soaked in the water from melting ice, and when you pull an item out of the ice chest, ice does not fall into the spot formerly occupied by the bottle of milk. It took us a while to figure out that the ice chest was causing the fuses to blow in the truck. Finally things deteriorated to the point where every time we plugged the ice chest into any of the three cigarette lighter-outlets in the truck, it blew the fuse for that outlet. 

I figured we had to give up and live with ice in the ice chest the rest of the trip. Kaylyn was not about to give up. Thanks to many phone calls and her persistence, by the end of the morning she had located a Wal-Mart with the same ice chest, and they traded our new-but-defunct model for a new-and-functioning ice chest. We bought new fuses for the truck. By noon we had missed several hours of touring but had straightened out the ice chest issues. Kaylyn was satisfied!

We moved to our favorite campground yet – in the Boston area. The man who showed us to our site said to Kaylyn, “Would you like me to help you back in?” He instructed her which way to turn the steering wheel as she moved the truck forward, perfectly positioning Miss Marshmallow to back into the spot. It was great! After a LUNCH of sandwiches, we headed into Concord.

Our first stop was a tour of the house where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. 

We walked around Walden Pond, which is now used as a local swimming beach. 

We walked across the bridge where “The shot was heard around the world” as the first volley of the Revolutionary War was fired. 

Finally we visited the cemetery where the literary giants of Concord are buried – including Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. We found their fans had left mementos on their graves, including pencils, pens and hand-written notes of appreciation. Why were so many literary greats gathered in one community? They were exploring an approach to life and faith called transcendentalism, stressing a path of using intellectual reason rather than a Biblical basis to find divine wisdom.

Tomorrow Kaylyn and I will get our first glimpse of Boston. Onward!