The Spirit of America

Last July, my family took a summer vacation to New York City. This month, we had a sequel trip. I think my parents wanted to return to New York before they forgot how to use the subway. I went with my parents; my sister, Susanne; and my niece, Allie.

Anyway, on the evening of June 13, we boarded a red-eye flight to NYC. Ugh. I hate red-eye. I didn't sleep at all on the plane, and I could barely function in New York. It's a good thing we just got on a tour bus and rode around. I slept most of the journey. By coincidence, our hotel room was the exact one we had last summer.

The next day, we took a tour boat to go see the Statue of Liberty. Last year we only rode a boat past it, so it was good to get on the island and see it up close. I was glad to visit all these important American sites during the Fourth of July season. Sometimes I have wondered, "Is the Statue of Liberty a symbol of the Fourth of July? It's more than a hundred years after independence." But then I realized, "Duh, it literally says 'July IV' on the statue itself." We couldn't go on the pedestal or in the statue because you have to get tickets in advance, but it was still fun to see.

 We got in line to get back on the boat, and my mom realized she left her camera at the gift shop cash register. I'm the fastest member of the family, so I had to go back to retrieve it. The cashiers looked at her pictures to make sure the camera belonged to us.

Then our boat took us to Ellis Island. They had requisite exhibits on NYC immigration of the early twentieth century, but I was more interested in their exhibit on American immigration of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

 After Ellis Island, we returned to the city, and my dad and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

 Once we were done there, we made our way toward One World Trade Center. We passed the eighteenth-century cemetery nearby. It's weird to me that so much in New York is way older than anything in Utah.

 We attended the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which is underground on the site of the World Trade Center Towers. September 11, 2001, is probably the most significant event in (American) history in my lifetime, so I enjoyed this museum. Well, I don't know if "enjoyed" is the right term. There was a profound solemnity throughout the museum. It was amazingly quiet. They had audio recordings of various voicemails, news coverage, and sirens playing. I didn't realize how dark I felt in the museum until a few days later, when I heard a real-life siren and recalled the somber emotions of the museum. I overheard one young boy say, "So, was it an accident that the plane flew into the tower?" This event happened before my niece was even born, which is weird to me. If you visit NYC, I recommend this museum.

The next day, the subway line we wanted to take was closed, so my dad and I walked to Rockefeller Center while the girls in the family took a cab there. 

St. Patrick's Cathedral would look massive anywhere else.

 Rockefeller was a lot less busy than the Empire State Building was last year, but it still showed similar views. It's weird to me that NYC has more people than the entire state of Utah.

 Then we went to the American Museum of Natural History. It was a great museum. Kind of funny to see nature in NYC.

 Once we were done at the museum, we walked through Central Park, where the bedrock is schist.

 Then we took a tour bus again for the evening.

This is a statue of Christopher Columbus from before it was fashionable to hate him.

Lady Gaga has a residence up there.

My parents took a cab back to the hotel, while Susanne, Allie and I went to Times Square. Then we walked back to our hotel.

Sunday morning, we rented a minivan and left NYC early in the morning. I don't like being a tourist on Sundays, but that's what my dad planned for. 

We drove into Connecticut, the first time I was ever in that state. We went to Mystic Seaport, a nineteenth-century whaling village/living museum. Um, I work in a nineteenth-century village! But, of course, we don't have any whaling stuff at This Is the Place. We stepped on a whaling boat.

 They had a replica Viking boat that actually sailed from Norway, and it happened to be Viking Day when we were there.

 I stepped into the bank and the drugstore, which we have at TITP. But most of my time at work is in the print shop. I told that to the lady in the press at Mystic Seaport, and she allowed me to go behind the counter to look at their printing stuff.

We left Mystic and drove into Rhode Island, another new state. We didn't get out anywhere, but we drove past a lot of expensive old houses. There were lots of places with Melville in the name.

Then we drove into Massachusetts, still another new state. We stopped for the night in Plymouth.

Monday was our day for actually touring Plymouth. This was my favorite part of the trip. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I felt as though I had walked through the turkey door on The Nightmare before Christmas. 

First we went to Plimoth Plantation, which has a Wampanoag village and an English (Pilgrim) village. At the Wampanoag village, they had modern Native Americans in seventeenth-century clothes and buildings. 

Wampanoag winter house...

...and summer house.

 Then they had the English village. There were historians in normal clothes who could tell you what was going on, but they also had actors in Pilgrim clothes who pretended they were in the 1620s. So when we said we were from Utah, they said, "I can't say I know where that is," and when we said we were descended from them, they said, "Oh, we're relations?" I understand why they did it that way, but it was a little weird.

This is a replica of Leiden Street, the oldest street in America. We later drove on the real Leiden Street, but I didn't take any pictures.

 I was excited to spend my cash on various Pilgrim/Thanksgiving items. In the gift shop, I got a Mayflower pen, a Mayflower ornament, a squishy toy Plymouth Rock, and a very interesting book called Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday. I read it over the course of the trip, finishing it on the plane. I knew some of the information in the book, but not everything. Pilgrims didn't even become associated with Thanksgiving until late in the nineteenth century. Before that, Thanksgiving was regarded as an early winter feasting day, not the autumnal harvest festival we think of today. That's certainly consistent with the nineteenth-century sources I have seen. Thanksgiving was a Puritan holiday, but the "First Thanksgiving" of 1621 wasn't a Thanksgiving at all, but a secular harvest feast.

The museum had a cafe with "historic" foods. I use scare quotes because I don't know how authentic it was. I was excited to try everything.

Cornmeal cookies.

Colonial sampler, with pickle "sallet," "pompion," and a turkey dish similar to stuffing.

Wampanoag sampler, with fish and succotash.

Indian pudding, which tasted like molasses.

 After we were done at Plimoth Plantation, we went to the beach to see Plymouth Rock, which is under an awning and surrounded by a gate. My family was disappointed, but I had already heard it was a small, unimpressive boulder, so I wasn't disappointed.

Ordinarily, they have the replica ship Mayflower II in the harbor, but it's undergoing renovations at Mystic Seaport, so we couldn't see it.

Then we stopped at a few nearby gift shops. There were lots of different stores right next to each other, but they all sold the same things. It's the only place I have seen in my life where Thanksgiving decorations outnumbered Christmas. I hoped to get some Thanksgiving clothing, but all their t-shirts were ugly.

We left Plymouth on Tuesday morning and headed up to Boston. The roads and drivers in Boston are totally nuts, but other than that, I liked Boston better than NYC. They have a red-brick Freedom Trail you can follow through the city which takes you to various historical sites. We went to a creepy eighteenth-century cemetery where Paul Revere and John Hancock are buried.

 The trail went by Paul Revere's house and the churches with the lanterns.

This is the site of the Boston Massacre.

And this is the site of the Boston Sewer.

 My dad and I walked to the USS Constitution, a vessel used in the War of 1812. I'm not really a fan of weapons or military history, but my dad was totally in his element.

I've only heard of Bell in Hand because Major Nelson had a sign for it on his wall in I Dream of Jeannie.

 Once we finally got out of Boston--which was no easy task--we drove up to Salem. My primary point of reference of Salem was a series of Bewitched episodes that took place there. And indeed, one of the first things we saw was TV Land's statue of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens.

 We went to two museums, the Salem Museum and the Witch History Museum. The Salem Museum was boring--few artifacts and lots of wordy signs. The Witch History Museum was disappointing and awkward. It was just a tour guide and creepy mannequins. It had a rather anti-Puritan bent. I've been in religious history long enough to know that things are never black and white.

In the Bewitched episodes, there were several signs that looked like this, so Samantha twitched them to make them beautiful.

 The various gift shops in Salem were all themed with pop-culture witches. It was a strange town. I'd like to go back, but only because I felt cheated. I think there is a decent museum there, but we didn't go to it.

Then we drove through New Hampshire (new state) into Maine (new state). We had a hotel in Old Orchard Beach, and it was right by the ocean. That's the first time I've ever seen the Atlantic, so I went and stepped in it. It was too cold for swimming.

On Wednesday, we went back to New Hampshire and drove up Mount Washington, the highest point in New England. It's only about 6,000 feet, and I had to laugh that you can drive to the top. You can't drive to the highest points out here in the West! I'm afraid of heights, so the drive did scare me a bit. They had a visitor's center at the top. They are very proud that the fastest wind ever recorded by man was recorded there. Not the fastest wind ever recorded, but the fastest recorded by man. Their museum also made it sound like recording the wind was some super dramatic, important historic event.

Mount Washington has its own zip code!

 Then we drove into Vermont--you guessed it, another new state. We went to Sharon to see the birthplace of Joseph Smith.

We really liked the senior missionary who gave our tour. I asked, "Was Andrew Jenson at the dedication ceremony?" And then she said she would give me a gift since I'm kind of a historian. The obelisk was dedicated in 1905, and local papers reported on it. In 2005, they reprinted those articles on hundred-year-old paper, and they had some leftovers, so she gave me one! (I still haven't unrolled it to look at it.)

The next morning, we left Vermont, and we drove briefly into Québec, Canada. Allie wanted to go to Canada, so we did. She wanted a Canada keychain, so we stopped at a few stores. We were super close to the border, but we were surprised that everything was already in French. Everyone spoke French. It felt like another country. Probably because it was another country. I'd been to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls as a kid, but that doesn't really count, and this was my first time in Québec. 

 We didn't find keychains in the Québecois stores, but right before the border back into the US, there was a touristy gift shop. Allie got her keychain. Back in 2014, I had red, white, and blue Summer Ice Pop Tic Tacs. I haven't seen them since then. So I was shocked and perplexed to see them again--in Canada! I can't get over how strange that is.

Then we were back in New York, which my mom said is like her true home--she was born there, and they would visit her grandparents there in the summers. We stopped to look over Ausable Chasm, but it was shockingly expensive, so we didn't go to it.

 Then we drove to the tourist town of Lake George. We boarded a tour boat, the Minne-Ha-Ha, on the lake.

On Friday, we headed up to Fort Ticonderoga, a pencil factory. Just kidding, it's an eighteenth-century fort built by the French and later occupied by British and Americans. On the way, we passed through the town of Bolton, where there was a plaque dedicated to my Mormon ancestor John Tanner. Upstate NY is my mom's family's territory, so it was unique to see one of my dad's ancestors there. 

 Fort Ticonderoga was nice. But military history isn't really my thing, especially from the eighteenth century. But my dad loved it again.

This is Mount Defiance overlooking Lake Champlain.

 That night we wandered the tourist trap of Lake George. My family stopped for ice cream at Ben and Jerry's, but they had nothing seasonal, so I got an Irish-themed sandwich next door instead. When we got back to our hotel, I decided to look at the Stewart's Shop next door, not expecting to find anything seasonal. But they had an ice cream called Fireworks, and I was so delighted! It's the little things.

On Saturday, we went to Saratoga, an American victory site during the Revolution, on our way to the airport.

 We also saw some locks on the Erie Canal.

Then we went to the airport in Albany, and we had a layover in Newark. We ate at a restaurant in that airport, and I requested no straw in my drink. As a result, no one got a straw. Environmental consciousness FTW!

On our flight home, we experienced some turbulence, and we passed some thunderstorms. That was amazing to see.

I'm glad to be back at home. But it was a wonderful trip.