Visit to Boston and New Hampshire: 09/03-09/07, 2021

Blog posts are a little out of order, but I am trying to catch up!  Over Labor Day weekend we decided to go visit my friend Suzanne and her family in New Hampshire.

The plan was to fly into Boston Friday, Sept 3rd.  Stay the night in Boston. Spend Saturday running around Boston to see as much as we possibly could in one day in the city.  Saturday evening, we would take the commuter bus from Boston up to Portsmouth, NH where Suzanne would pick us up and take us back to her house.  We planned on spending Sunday and Monday with them.  Then Tuesday early morning, Suzanne would drop us back off at the bus station and we would take the bus from Portsmouth back to Logan airport to head home.  

The flight from GR to Boston was pretty uneventful.  Once we arrived at the Logan airport, we got an Uber to our hotel in downtown Boston.

The next day, we got up early, had breakfast at the hotel, then took off to see as many places as we could before we had to be on the bus heading to NH.

Large Boston sign near Quincy Market area

Granary Cemetery.  You have to visit some of these old cemeteries.  I know it seems morbid, but you have to think that Boston is one of the original cities in the US and people that founded this country are buried there.  It's kind of amazing.

This apparently the oldest stone in the cemetery,  People died in the 1600's

One of things I could never understand, is how in the heck can some of these stones be so close to each other.  I read that sometime years ago, they decided to put walkways in the cemetery so you could easily walk to the famous people. When they put the walkways in, they just MOVED THE STONES THAT WERE IN THEIR WAY. They didn't move the bodies. So, I'm guessing there are bodies under the walkways.

The stones really look like something from an old Halloween movie

Thanks Sam!  You make a fine beer! :P

John Hancock's grave

Paul Revere's grave

Pretty sure this picture was taken at Copp's hill cemetery.  Another super old cemetery in downtown Boston.

The stones are very interesting.  You are not allowed to do gave stone rubbings either.

The Old North Church.  This is the church that they hung the lanterns in.  One if by land, 2 if by sea telling everyone the British were coming.

Each family had a box to sit in to stay warm in the winter.  The poor people sat in the rafters upstairs.

Ye old skinny house.  Across the street from the Copp's hill cemetery

The old State house. You can tour through it.  It's so small compared to all the buildings surrounding it!

In front of the old state building is this landmark which marks the site of the Boston Massacre. 

Faneuil Hall - There was not a ton of stuff in here because of Covid. Things were just closed.

Quincy Market reminds me of the Chelsey Market in NYC or Pike's place in Seattle. Lots of food vendors and tourists.  Kind of fun to see.

A random park kind of near Quincy Market

Paul Revere's home.  We toured it, but you are not allowed to take pictures inside.  It's pretty interesting, but in all honesty, it looks completely different then when the Reveres lived here.  There have been a lot of changes over the years before the City took it over as a museum.  And you have to understand that even 50 years ago the way people 'restored' things would be totally different then how we restore things today.  Not a lot of original materials still exist in this house, but still very cool.

One of the oldest restaurants in Boston.  It was super packed when we went by.  I had already been there before and taken a menu. hehe.  There are several bars in this area that claim to be the oldest or the first.

The Holocaust Memorial.  There are several of these glass pillars.  Each Pillar represents a concentration camp.  On the panels of glass are the numbers of each person who was sent there.  In the below picture you can see how small the numbers are written.  It still is hard to wrap your head around how many people all these numbers represent. 

Street performers downtown.  The red brick line in front of them is the Freedom Trail. You can follow this brick trail all over the city in order to see all the important historical sights.

Beacon Hill homes all look like this.  So beautiful and what I imagine all of New England should look like

Acorn Street. One of the oldest streets in Boston.  It still has the original cobblestone. There were so many people taking pictures here it was impossible to capture it empty without people

In the Beacon Hill area of Boston, there are rows and rows of beautiful brick homes with stoops.  Some of the homes have random purple panes.  It is said that it was some kind of mistake that happened in the forming of the windows back when the homes were built.

The first time I had come to Boston some 10 years ago, this building was called Ye Old corner Book Store.  It was build in the early 1700's.  It's on the Freedom Trail.  As we were looking around, I thought, "That old bookstore is around here somewhere".  Long story short, the reason I couldn't find it is because I was looking for a bookstore and the actual bookstore is now Ye Old Chipotle Chain Restaurant.  What the heck Boston???

We found the bench in Boston Common that Robin Williams and Matt Damon sat on to film a scene in Good Will Hunting.  Gary never saw the movie of course! He wasn't as excited as I was!

A book belonging to John Hancock.  That is his signature. 

The Warren Tavern.  It's across the river in Charlestown near Bunker Hill.  There are a lot of pubs that boast being 'the oldest in Boston'. This is one of them.  It was pretty cool inside.  the food and beer were good and we got a souvenir glass.

Last stop in Boston: Bunker Hill.

The Freedom Trail ends at Bunker Hill.

After Bunker Hill, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, we got an Uber and headed back to the airport to take the commuter bus up to New Hampshire.  The buses are really nice and it's way cheaper then renting a car.  The drive to NH was maybe 2hrs total.  I think we arrived around 8pm at the bus station.  Suzanne was there to pick us up and take us back to her house.

The first day we were there, they took us up into the mountains to this ski lodge Cranmore Mountain Resort.  They have a few rides you can do in the summer.  You can also take the chair lift up to the top of the mountain for a great view!
 

Cranmore Mountain resort in Conway, NH

Owen and Samuel riding the zip line

Suzanne and Ryan

Gary and I getting ready to ride the coaster.

Beautiful view at the top of the mountain

The next day, Suzanne took us and the boys to the ocean.  First stop was at the local lobster shack to pick up lobsters and steamers for dinner,.

Then we headed off to the beach for the day.

Wallis Sands State Beach

True to form, I fell and cut my foot really bad during our beach day.  Go figure.

After the beach we stopped along the coast and got some ice cream.  Fun fact: in New England they do not call a malted milk shake a malt.  They call it a Frappe.  I'm glad Suzanne told me because I had no idea what the ice cream girl was talking about.

After ice cream, we headed back to their house for dinner.

Gary, Owen and Samuel.

Poor Mr. Lobster.  I couldn't watch him get boiled

Suzanne and I following Ryan's instructions on how to break down a lobster.  I'm a pro now!

After dinner we hung out, chatted and relaxed.  We didn't sleep much that night because we had to get up around 3am to catch the early morning bus back to Boston for our flight home.  

It was a whirlwind trip, but it was nice to see Suzanne and her family and visit with them.  We will have to plan on visiting them again soon!

Idaho Falls Marathon: 07/30 - 08/02, 2021

Quick trip to Idaho falls to run the Idaho Falls marathon with Tracy Anderson.  

I flew out of Grand Rapids late afternoon on Thursday, July 29th.  I didn't get into Idaho Falls until around 9pm.  I grabbed an uber and got to my fancy Motel 6 just fine.  I was starving, so I walked to the Safeway to grab some simple food for the next couple of days.

Friday morning, I did have to call into a work meeting for an hour, but it was no big deal.  Since I was on Idaho time, it worked out good for me.  I was done with my meeting by 10am.  After the meeting, Tracy came and picked me up in her cousin's vehicle. Her cousin Carrie worked at the Idaho Falls museum as the curator.  We decided to meet her at the museum.  Her cousin gave us a tour of the entire museum. It sounds dorky, but I really liked it!  It was super interesting because she knew everything about all the artifacts in the museum.

Welcome to Idaho Falls!

I had no clue they found so many prehistoric animals in Idaho.

The cougar in the center was a new addition.  Sadly, he had started wandering down into town and was becoming dangerous to people.  They had to 'dispatch' him.  AKA: put him down.  

A local farmer found this carving from early settlers on his property.  He donated it to the museum.  I thought it was amazing!

They are not sure where this flag came from, but they think it's been through a few battles.  Carrie explained the care that goes into keeping a flag like this preserved.  Even though it's under protective glass and carefully tacked down, the threads are still slowly eroding over time.

Blood on the star from a battle?

The Oregon Trail went right through Idaho.  Apparently, the settlers took all their belongings with them.  However, as the trail wore on and it became more difficult to carry non-essential items, settlers starting throwing out stuff they decided they didn't need.  These are some of the items.  Some small stuff, but sometimes they threw out big stuff like pianos.  Carrie said that farmers will STILL find things that were thrown to the wayside on the trail.  The center item is a hair wreath.  Ew...

They also had the exhibit where they plasticize bodies.  They had animals and people.  Kind of weird to see a human leg.  But still interesting.

After the museum tour, we went to lunch at a small cafe.  Carrie had to finish up her work day, so Tracy and I walked around a bit before we ended up getting our race packets at Bill's Bike and Run shop.

Idaho Falls has a really beautiful river and walkway along the river.  They really utilized the waterway well!

There is a large Mormon population in Idaho Falls,  This is the LDS Temple of Idaho Falls.

Japanese Zen Garden area.  However, Carrie knew the real history from working at the museum.  This area originally had a brothel located on it.  Now it's a popular place for weddings.   lol

That evening, we picked up Carrie's husband and the 4 of us went to dinner at a Mexican place in Idaho Falls.  Since we are still mid-Covid, lines were long because the restaurants cannot get workers.  But we had a good dinner and then Tracy's cousins took us around to show us the marathon route.  The Marathon was going to be an out and back.  We would take busses out to the start and run back into town.  It's nice to see the route before hand so you can be kind of familiar with where you are running.

Here we are at the start of the race!  The race started at 6000ish feet.  Usually that is not a problem.  HOWEVER, there were a couple of huge hills within the first 10 miles of the race.  Those hills almost killed me!

Yeah, we took school busses to the start and here are all the marathoners.  Not a lot of people!  Maybe 60-100.  More people ran the half.

This picture does not explain the reality of this hill.  We are at 6000ish feet.  This hill was probably a mile or so long.  It was not that hot out, but since I was not used to the elevation, sweat was pouring off of me.  I had to run reeeeeeeaaally slow, but I made it up the hill without walking so I was proud of myself.

The scenery was really cool.  Thank goodness this huge rain storm did not hit us while running!

I never take a lot of pictures in the middle of the race. Mostly because I am dying.  But, I finished!  Not my best but not my worst time.

I'm too cheap to buy the good race pictures. haha

After the race, they dropped me back off at my hotel.  I showered and got ready for them to pick me up for a late celebratory lunch with beer.  We had a nice lunch and visited with Tracy's cousins for a bit.  After lunch they dropped me back at my hotel and I think I just crashed the rest of the day!

The next day, we were all planning on heading to Yellowstone for the day. It was going to be me, Tracy, her cousin Carrie and her husband and one of her sons.  I didn't know exactly what we were going to do, so I rented a car ahead of time on Turo.  After the car debacle we had in Hawaii (see that blog for more details!), I will never rent a car through a regular rental place again.  I rented a full size Jeep from this guy.  He dropped it off Saturday evening right at the hotel.  We could use it all the next day in Yellowstone.  Then he let me hold on to the Jeep and I drove it to the airport the next day and left it there for him to pick up.  And the money goes to a person, not a huge corporation.  It worked out perfectly!

Sunday, August 1st, I packed up my stuff and headed over to pick up Tracy and her cousins.  Her cousin's husband was good with driving, so we drove the 2hs through Idaho, a little bit of Montana and entered through West Yellowstone park.

Entering through West Yellowstone Park!

All these hot springs are beautiful, but they don't always smell the best! haha

You must stay on the walkways. You are not allowed to even touch the water on either side because it is so hot.

We decided that the area around old faithful was too packed with people.  So, we went on a little hike to see a bird's eye view of the geyser.  It took us longer then we thought so we didn't get to see it in full force!  We only saw the ending.  haha oh well!

One thing that I didn't really like about Yellowstone is that it is completely built to drive in your car to one spot, park, take a picture, and get back into your car and continue driving to the next location.  I hate that.  The walkways were absolutely packed and we walked along some areas like sheep.  Getting away from people is pretty easy though.  Most people are totally lazy and will not put any effort into walking farther then they have to.  We just needed to head on the paths that had stairs or were farther to walk and there would be 1/4 the amount of people.  Even thought I thought the park was packed, I was told they were no where near their pre-covid numbers.  Also, foreigners usually make up a majority of the tourists.  There were no foreigners because of travel restrictions and Covid.  It was all Americans.

This doesn't even look real!!!

We joked that this was an animatronic buffalo.  It was easy to spot any wildlife because EVERYONE would stop right in the road and get out of their cars to take pictures.  Whenever there was a traffic jam, it was not because of an accident, it was because everyone was gawking at the animals!  Whenever you saw a pile of people staring into the distance with their super zoom lens, there was probably an animal to look at.

I guess this natural area is typically covered in water falls.  They were in the middle of a drought, so no water falls. Mammoth Hot springs.

The little town in the distance is Fort Yellowstone, which seems find of funny to think this was a fort originally.  But now it's the headquarters for Yellowstone

Around 5pm a lot of wildlife started coming out.  This guy walked right into the little town!  One thing that kind of sucked is that this whole area is a national park so the hotels and diners were closed or very minimally open because of covid.  We had to get our food and eat outside.  There were signs everywhere saying beware of the Elk! I don't think they are afraid to steal your lunch!

There's that animatronic buffalo again! hahah

This was our last stop in YellowStone!  We packed up after this and drove back to Idaho Falls.  We didn't get back until 10pm or so.  I filled up the Jeep, said my goodbyes to Tracy and her family, cleaned out the Jeep and gave it a car wash then headed back to my hotel.  The next day it was back to the airport early to catch a flight home!  Next time I need to spend more time there!