Cousin Dante's Tour of Lowell

The boys' cousin Dante arrived from California last night -- not a moment too soon for Casey who counted down all day long, stopping every hour or so to calculate how many more hours and minutes "until I see Cousin Dante."

Dante will be here through next week and will drive with us to North Carolina where we'll meet up with the rest of his family for our annual annual week-long beach trip/family reunion at Oak Island.

Since this is Dante's first trip to New England and there is soooo much history here, I was thinking that we'd visit one major historical attraction each day and visit them roughly in historical order. So today we were tentatively scheduled to visit Plimoth Plantation, a re-enactment of the village of Plimoth where the pilgrams landed and set up house back in 1620. But heavy rain south of Boston (ie Plymouth) meant today wasn't a good day to visit an outdoor venue. So, we drove north to the town of Lowell to learn about the industrialization, mills, and the textile business.


Here the boys are inside the National Park visitor center clowning around a mock-up street car while we wait for the introductory film about Lowell.
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Here are the boys outside on an actual street car, waiting to be shuttled to the mill museum.




Here the boys are at the entrance to the mill museum.




Here the boys are inside the mill room at the museum. This is a room full of power driven looms, and only a handful are actually running. Even so, the noise is such that when you pay your admission fee, you get earplugs with your ticket.