Leaving Brattleboro we went through Keene and then took back roads to Lexington and Concord. I try as much as possible to stay off of the interstates. We stopped at Townsend as it looked interesting. It is a small town and we walked over to this old mill site, mill-pond and abandoned spur. There were trout visible in the rock-lined raceway. It was a beautiful site that you would miss on the highway.
At Concord, we stopped at Robbins-Hutchinson House before crossing the road to the North Bridge.
This is the monument to the Minutemen, silently honoring the volunteers where they took their stand.
This is the North Bridge, where the “shot heard round the world” was fired. This is Cathy, standing in the middle…
The inscription on the ca 1836 monument to the altercation…
This is the grave of the first British soldiers to die in the Revolutionary War (a little confusing because eight died in the Lexington battles several days earlier)…
A ca 1776 farmhouse as seen looking downstream from the North Bridge…
After settling down in Littleton, MA, we went to Lexington for a quick trip to do some advance planning for the next day. When talking to a local runner, he led us to this neat trail. It is the Emerson-Thoreau Amble. It is relatively unknown outside of the locals and the trailhead was not marked from the road. You had to actually be looking for it! Well, off we went, first thing in the morning. We started at the Emerson House, by the Concord Ice HOuse, around Fairyland Pond, by the Brister-Freeman Home site and on to Thoreau’s Cabin site, on Walden Pond. It was supposed to be about a three-mile round trip, but we took side trails and it became four miles. Some of the trail was raised as trail traversed several bogs.
This is thw site of Thoreau’s cabin. It was overlooking Walden’s Pond.
This is Walden’s Pond, at the end of the trail.
Taking a different route back, we came upon this spring, just off the trail. It was not marked from the trail but I found it curious that a stream was flowing near the trail where there really should not be one, so I followed it to the source…
After we returned to the trailhead, I decided to make a second round, giving Cathy some reading time in the truck. I took a different route so I would not be covering the same ground and added about a mile in distance as the day was still young. On the return from Walden’s Pond, I did a face-plant, tripping over a small root. A bloodied my arm, was covered in mud and hit my head (rock vs rock, it was a tie). After semi-cleaning up, we stopped at an urgent care on the way back to Littleton. I had picked up a couple of ticks on the run through the woods, and these guys carry lyme disease. It was a little hot and humid…
We spent the rest of the afternoon in and around Lexington. This is where Louisa May Alcott wrote “Little Women”…
“Wayside”, home of Hawthorn, the Alcotts and Margaret Sidney…
Home of Ralph Waldo Emerson…
A church that caught my attention…
This is the Munroe Tavern, where the British forces set up their field hospital and headquarters on April 19, 1775. John Raymond, an American was shot and killed as he attempted to leave the establishment when the Redcoats took over, becoming the tenth American to be killed in Lexington. The garden behind it included colonial-era plantings…
Buckman Tavern, ca 1709, was a gathering place for the Lexington Militia in 1776. It is right on the town square were the face-off took place…
Cathy and me on the Common. The church behind Cathy is being repainted. The original building on that site, destroyed by fire in 1846, was erected in 1692. I am in front of the Revolutionary War Monument, erected in 1799. It marks the remains of seven of the eight militia who died on the morning of April 19, 1775.
This is the Belfry, which was originally constructed in 1761, it was moved from this original site, due to a rent dispute with the landowner, to the town Common. It was on the Common that the bell was rung on the morning of April 19th. It was returned to this hill in 1891.
It was a kind of steep walk up to the original site, but there were steps of sorts to help.
Here are two homes on the Common, both of which were standing on April 19th, 1775. What a view that must have been!
Travelling with the Schinglers 