Gehlke Family 2007 East Coast Vacation travelogue -- Day 4

We began the day with storm clouds. We're looking across the parking lot of our hotel in Fall River, Mass. Photo by Glenn.

There is a story behind this... um, display... in Fall River. Apparently the guy who placed these commodes owns a restaurant. One of the tenants of the industrial park who owns a substantial bit of the land sued last year to try to force the restaurateur to remove the display. The suit was unsuccessful. Can't see why anyone would object to this. Photo by Roni.

Having failed to satisfy our lighthouse cravings yesterday, we check out the Borden Flat Lighthouse located on the Taunton River in Fall River. The lighthouse is named for the Borden family, who will be forever remembered for Lizzy Borden, acquitted in the famous murder of her parents. Photo by Roni.

We'd seen so many Dunkin' Donuts in New England that Ben started keeping count. The chain is in just about every city and in some cases on every street corner. Photo by Glenn.

Just dropping in to say hello. Glenn and Roni visit with Glenn's Uncle Dave Henry at his home in Berkley. It was our first visit. Photo by Ben.

We liked this whimsical face — one of several — on one of the trees in Glenn's uncle's back yard. Photo by Glenn.

We duel with cameras at 10 paces! Somewhere, Dave has a photo of Glenn with a camera pointed his direction. Photo by Glenn.

Ben wishes he had a yard like this at home. It's an acre and a half, with plenty of room for an active teenager to roam. Photo by Glenn.

Back to lighthouse hunting. This is the Butler Flats Light Station in New Bedford, Mass. Constructed in 1898. Standing 53 feet tall, it is accessible only by boat Photo by Glenn.

That's Fort Taber in the background, located in New Bedford. The fort was constructed in 1860 and designed in part by Robert E. Lee. It is closed to public access, but it sure makes a fun backdrop for a portrait. Photo by Roni.

You can't go inside Fort Taber, but there are a few holes you can peek through. This is what you'll find if you do. The cast iron columns supporting the second floor were right at home during the Civil War. Photo by Glenn.

Hey, Dad! Watch this! The kid's got the height... he's got the distance... he's got... a sore leg after a rough landing that was not captured on film. Ah well, the judges will give him a 7.9 on the attempt. Photo by Glenn.

This is a detail shot of the railroad bridge that crosses the Cape Cod Canal at Buzzards Bay. Built in the mid-1930s, it is one of the largest vertical lift bridges in the world. Photo by Glenn.

The boat harbor at Sandwich, Mass., was relatively calm when we visited it at 6 p.m. after lunch at a nearby restaurant. Photo by Roni.

It was afte 7 p.m. when we arrived in Plymouth, so didn't spend a lot of time looking at the Mayflower II, a replica of the famous Pilgrim ship that landed at Plymouth Rock nearly 400 years ago. Photo by Glenn.

Roni videotapes while Ben checks out the map of Plymouth. Photo by Glenn.

Here is the famous Plymouth Rock, the object that tens of thousands of people come from far and wide every year to see. Photo by Glenn.

That's it? A big rock? I don't see what all the fuss is. I mean, it's just a rock... Photo by Glenn.

...Not just a rock, Son. This big rock has a date carved in it. See? So what, it was put there in 1880 and no one is entirely sure that this was the rock the Pilgrims first set foot on? The point is... it's a really big rock with a date carved in it! Photo by Glenn.

And just to prove how important it is, the rock has been given its own pavilion along the shore. Sort of pointless to have a gate in the bottom because it's not like they let you walk down on the beach to view it. But it is what it is. Photo by Glenn.

Our day about over, we roll across the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge on I-93 north of Boston. Photo by Roni.

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Meandering through Massachusetts

Friday, June 29 (Day 4) — It's a good thing we booked all our rooms in advance for this vacation, because we've been getting into our hotels way too late in the evening. We hit Lowell, Mass., at 9:30 tonight, after hauling butt from Cape Cod just a few hours earlier. It's a good thing that the New England states are so small, as it makes the distances seem more easily conquerable.

We got a late start this morning, venturing out of our room at the Best Western Fall River just before the breakfast buffet ended at 9:30. The dining area was packed and there were no seats available, so we took our meager meals back to the room to finish there. I had arranged for us to meet up with my Uncle Dave at his home in nearby Berkley at 11 a.m., but we still had some time to kill before we needed to get on the road. On our way into town last night Roni had seen a small lighthouse that she wanted to investigate, so we backtracked to the I-195 bridge and wound up driving through the middle of downtown Fall River looking for the best photo spot. The streets here are entirely too narrow for two-way traffic, yet somehow people manage just fine. I didn't like whipping along in the Taurus like the locals seem comfortable doing, coming just inches away from parked cars (and those moving in the opposite direction) while traveling at least 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. I prayed no one would come at me from the opposite direction, or that they would come up impatiently behind me.

There was no good photo location, so Roni suggested we temporarily park at a marine service center and boat sales business. It seemed an odd thing to do, and I felt out of place when we were stopped in the middle of their parking lot while Roni hopped out to stake out her shot. But one of the workers saw her and basically pointed out where she should go to take the picture. Obviously they are used to silly tourists like us.

In the process of trying to find our way back to Highway 79, we somehow stumbled upon Battleship Cove, which is a naval museum highlighted by the presence of the U.S.S. Massachusetts. Visitors can pay to tour that ship and several others. There are also overnight stays. We just wanted a picture of the battleship, so we got one and moved on.

My uncle's house in Berkley is located about a dozen miles from where we spent the night. It is situated among dense forest on about an acre and a half, enough to make us envious of all the space he has available in his yard. We arrived just after 11 a.m. and parked in his driveway at the end of a gravel turnaround. The front yard is all grassed in with several varieties of trees creating a nice display. My cousin Jeff was home, but apparently not up to taking visitors. I was a bit curious to see him as it had been many years since I last saw him at one of our family reunions, and we've both aged a bit in that time. But I guess we'll have to wait for another occasion. Same goes for my Aunt Marie, who has been in Oregon a few weeks for the arrival of my cousin Jalane's baby. The baby arrived later than expected, so Marie delayed her return home until next Tuesday. Just a few days off from seeing her, but at least I got to see her last September at our family reunion in Watsonville.

We had prepared to go out for brunch, but instead we got to visiting in my uncle's yard and the time got away from us in a hurry. Around 12:30 we had to move along because we had other places to check out today and not nearly enough time to see them all. That's the big problem with this sort of a trip — it's difficult to do much visiting with family when you are sightseeing, because the two activities are seldom compatible. We were grateful for the opportunity to see my uncle's home and sorry we didn't have more time, although Roni seems convinced that Massachusetts would be an excellent area in which to retire. I'm not that fond of snow, so I doubt that will happen.

We picked up some snacks for the road at a convenience store in town. Ben has been counting Dunkin' Donuts franchises the last couple days of our journey, so when we saw one next door to the convenience store, we decided to humor him and picked up doughnuts for the three of us. I was enjoying listening to the conversations of the other customers as they bantered with the clerks in their thick Bostonian accents: "One coffee, light side, two sugars." Imagine the voice of John F. Kennedy while you read that and you'll know exactly how it sounded.

From there we headed east in search of more lighthouses and wound up in New Bedford, a hopping fishing port. The place was amazingly busy — and smelled of fish from all the seafood companies operating near the port. Once again I found myself traversing narrow streets with fearless local drivers racing past me in lanes barely big enough to squeeze two cars. We found our way out to the Fort Taber Military Museum and looked around the ruins of old Fort Taber, a Civil War-era fort built to guard against raids in nearby Buzzard's Bay.

The fort is quite amazing. You can't go inside, but you can peek through several holes in the boarded-up windows to see what the barracks looked like inside, with their cast iron columns and walkways. Must have been something to see in its heyday. The cannons could fire up to three miles out in the bay. Would have been useful when the British raided the town in the late 1770s.

We continued east until we reached the start of Cape Cod. We stopped at the chamber of commerce near Onset, then continued on to Sagamore, Sandwich and got as far east as Barnstable. Backtracking to Sandwich, we stopped for lunch at a popular place called Sam's Seafood, where naturally I ordered a fish filet sandwich. I also ordered clam chowder just to try it, while Roni had the lobster bisque. Great stuff, and of course non-fattening. (Not!)

It was getting late in the day by the time we left Sandwich and began heading north along Highway 3 for Plymouth. We wanted to be sure to see Plymouth Rock before we lost our light. As it turned out we had nothing to fear, as it was only 20 miles away from Cape Cod. But I wasn't expecting how utterly busy it was. Even at 6 p.m. the street parking lots were full. We wound up parking three blocks away up a hill and got in a good walk to work off some of our seafood calories.

Plymouth bases its entire tourist industry around the famous rock allegedly trodden on by the Pilgrims in 1620. For $8 you can tour the Mayflower II, which is anchored in the harbor for all to admire from afar. A bit farther down the sidewalk is the Greek architecture pavilion that houses the rock. It really isn't much to look at, as Ben informed us incessantly afterward. The rock sits at the bottom of a caged pit, inaccessible to human contact. Ben said it looks like a caged animal, and he wasn't far off. We got our photos and postcards and hiked back to the car in time to get back on the highway well before dusk.

We eventually hooked up with I-93 that took us through Boston as the sun went down. We got to drive through the infamous "Big Dig" as it is known here, which essentially is a tunnel under the city's business district. We were late enough in the day that the traffic was bearable. We got a bit lost looking for I-95, with me taking the road north when I should have gone south. That delayed us an additional half hour getting into Lowell, where we checked into Room 308 at the Courtyard by Marriott. We'll be staying here three nights, which is a nice change of pace from the first three days of our vacation. We hope to investigate Boston some more tomorrow.