September 22, 2008 – Minuteman Campground

It rained most of the night, last night, even though the forecast had been for clear weather. It remained cool and cloudy all day, fortunately it didn’t rain anymore today. We took jackets when we left this morning, since it was in the low 50’s and we were headed for the coast. We were glad we had them.

We left the campground about 9:00 am and drove about an hour and a half to Plymouth, MA. Plymouth Rock was a bit disappointing. Yep, it was a rock! They had construction and barricades all around it, except for a three foot square piece of plexiglass that you could look through to see that, yes, there was a rock there. They also had a replica of the Mayflower to tour.

That was pretty interesting. It was amazing to see how small it was! The hull at the largest part was only 90ft. by 25 ft. They sailed with 102 passengers, plus cows, pigs, chickens and barrels and barrels of preserved foods (salted meats, and dried beans, fruits and vegetables). The bunks where the crew slept were about 2 feet by 5 feet. Larry didn’t think he would have fit very well into the bunks. There was a brick hearth for cooking meals inside a room on the upper deck. I believe they said they lived on it for seven months, 5 months of travel and another 2 months before they had houses built.

We then toured the Plimoth settlement (no, that’s not misspelled). This showed a village of the Native Americans, the Wampanoag. They had Native staff there to explain their way of life then and now. Then there also was an English village set up, with people re-enacting how they lived. You could ask questions and they would explain the lifestyle as if they had been transported in a time machine and knew no other way. There was a group of teenagers from a school touring and they were busy asking questions and writing the answers in notebooks. I overheard one of the re-enactors tell them something about having butter shipped in from England. I asked why they had it shipped in because they had cows. She acted very indignant over the question, because with only 3 cows for the whole village, they couldn’t spare any of the milk to make butter!

She was almost yelling that she would make butter if the 3 cows belonged to her own family, but they had to supply everyone.

It was all very interesting.

We ate on the way back at a little hole in the wall. We’re always hoping to find something like they show on the Food Network. We didn’t! We had one of their lobster rolls and also crab cakes. Not being really thrilled with either, we ordered fried clams to go and ate them on the way back. None of it was worthy of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”. We got back about 6:30 pm. Penny had stayed in the truck the whole time we were out and made it just fine. She seemed to have lain in her cage the times we were away from the truck.