Day 14 A Visit to Lowell

We had a couple of places to visit today. First, was The Quilted Crow, which is a quilt shop in Boxborough, MA just a short drive away. It's always amazing to me how close things are in New England, When we lived in Florida it took 2 days of driving just to get out of the state.  I regress----The Quilted Crow looked like a large home on a side street. The entrance was to the right and it had a lot of rooms, including a nice classroom with a big flat panel TV.

 

This shop had tons of hand dyed wool and wool kits and threads. A tremendous selection. Also, there was needle punch and good quality fabric. I looked around for a long time. Had I not had a couple of wool projects already started I would have been tempted to buy a new one. They had fabric arranged by collection and had a lot of Jo Morton, Kansas Troubles, French General and others. Very nice selections. No Kaffee and wild and crazy stuff.

Then we traveled north to Lowell to visit the New England Quilt Museum.      http://www.nequiltmuseum.org/

It was located in busy downtown Lowell. This is a picture of the back on the building. The building is shaped like a triangle and sits on a corner. It was originally a bank.

The museum has a really nice gift shop with books, cards, finished quilts, FQs, jackets and other items for sale to benefit the museum. The quilts collections on display are upstairs. While we were there the collection was cheddar quilts. Most are from the 1700s to 1800s, but there are a couple from 1900. You can take as many pictures as you want for personal use, but I'm really not supposed to post pictures. Since I can block out access to my blog and no one looks at it except a few I think it will be OK. Hope so anyway. 

Lots of old cheddar quilts. It's so hard to find this true cheddar color today.

 

 

Where's the cheddar??? I didn't see any. This was in a different room.

 

 

 

 

 

Also on the second floor was their lending library-----yes a lending library of QUILT BOOKS and magazines. You can even borrow from out of state and they will mail them to you. They have a large selection. Most everything is donated and they receive books and magazines on a regular basis. What do they do when the get too many donations? Have a sale, of course with the proceeds going to the museum. There was such a sale going on and so I had to look through the sale items and I did find a few good books for $3 to $5. They are all older books most of which  are out of print. I found 3 Elly Sienkiewicz books for $6. The one I really wanted, "Spoken Without a Word" is out of print and a collectors item was in the gift shop for a mere $300. Oh well. The other books were a terrific find.

We wish we had an extra day here. In Lowell, there is a NPS Historic area of the old textile mill area. Unfortunately we had missed the times for the tours, but it would be really nice to see this area. Maybe next trip.

We are headed to Rangeley for more fun and hopefully more quilting.

 

 

Day 13 A visit to Minuteman National Park

It is only fitting that we visit the Minuteman National Historic Park since we are staying at the Minuteman CG. We have stayed here before only as an overnight stay and always wondered why this CG had this name. It just didn't register that we were essentially in Lexington and Concord, where the Revolutionary War began. When we picked up our rental car and drove to the CG we noticed NP signs and parking all along the way towards the CG. When we looked on the NP website we realized that we were in the middle of a major historical area. So we paid a visit to the NP.

We stopped at the visitors  center in Lexington. There we saw a multimedia presentation about how the war started and exactly what happened. I must admit I don't remember the details that much except the part about taxes, the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere's ride. Due to space and my patience I can't write it all down for you. Look it up it is very interesting, especially since I'm older and now don't have to learn it for history class.


This is the walk to the visitor's center. Very beautiful area and the weather was in the 60's.

 

This is one of the Visitor Centers.

In Boston, a man hung 2 lanterns in the window signifying how the British were marching towards the Colonists. One if by land, Two if by sea. Paul rode to the north, then west to warn the Colonists,. William Dawes rode south, then west.

 

This is where Paul Revere and Samuel Dawes were captured. (Gee, I don't remember that part in history). A third man (the real hero), Samuel Prescott joined then and rides on to warn the Colonists.

At Lexington Green the first shot was fired.

This is Hartwell Tavern along the road to Concord and the route taken during the fighting.

Notice the nice floor cloth.

Beautiful scenery and so much history, which I will not write here. Check it out on the Internet or in a history book.

This is the second Visitor's Center, which was the Buttrick Estate. Some Visitor's Center. How about that staircase and chandelier?
 

NP Administrative offices are upstairs. Hey Ryan, does that look better that swatting mosquitoes in the Everglades??????

This is the location of "The Shot Heard Round the World".
What a great visit and a really good time of year. Not crowded and cool weather.

Back at the MH.

We had a great day, and so did Bentley. Here he is in his hiddie ottoman. He was glad to see us come home as were the other 2.

Day 12 From Intercourse, PA to Littleton, MA

I forgot to post the pictures of our favorite campground in Intercourse. We try to stay here whenever we are in the area. Since we rent a car to travel around the area we often use Enterprise. Their rental agency is at a car dealership in New Holland and it is very hard to maneuver a MH through their parking lot so we ask for a pick up. We told them we needed a ride to pick up the car the next day at about 8:30AM. Usually when you are ready, you call Enterprise, they pick you up and drive you to the agency to fill out your paperwork. In this case the phone rang at 8:30AM and Rachel said she was here with our car. She filled out the paperwork on the spot and away she went. When we left they told us to just leave the car at the CG and they would pick it up. What a great service.
Did I say "I love this place"?

The CG we were at is very small, but the people there are just so nice. This is their office.


This is one side of the office building. They must be true quilters at heart.

 

This is the farm across the street from the CG. The barn has tobacco hanging in bunches to dry.

Saturday is an extremely busy day in Intercourse. Lots of horses and buggies and lots of tourists.

On Sunday we arrived in Littleton, Ma at another favorite CG, the Minutemen CG,(outside of Boston). A long drive, but we are here for a couple of days. Our campsite backs up to the woods and it is a very heavily treed CG with lots of squirrels for the kitties amusement. There are going to enjoy their time here.

Day 11 A VISIT WITH MADONNA AND JIM

What a fun day. David and drove to Baltimore to meet Madonna and Jim. We haven't seen them since Najla and Ryan's wedding and being so close to them we hated to miss the opportunity. The big challenge was trying to find some where to meet that was about half way in between where we were in Intercourse, PA and where they were in North Bethesda, MD.

Madonna suggested Evergreen Mansion. The Evergreen sits next to Loyola University and Johns Hopkins University. The young lady that gave us a wonderful tour of the mansion is a bio medical engineering student at Johns Hopkins with an interest in art and she was so knowledgeable, able to answer all of our questions and more.
 It is hard to describe Evergreen, since it is a mansion with 48 rooms of which about 20 are opened to the public and an extensive museum. The Evergreen was built during the mid 19th  century and owned by the Garrett family. John Garrett was the president of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad (hence all the money to purchase and maintain such a property). The mansion is truly a museum, library and gardens. We were not able to see the gardens since there was a wedding being held there later in the afternoon. The libraries were many, including many first editions and some books from the 1500s. Many books were related to birds, flowers and nature and books were everywhere. Here are a couple of articles about the mansion. Unfortunately we were not able to photograph inside the museum, probably due to the hundreds of Tiffany glass, doors, lamps, etc and the original artwork from Degas, Picasso, Dufy and other artists.
Here is an article concerning the renovation done by one of the owners Alice Warter.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-23/entertainment/41439021_1_ballets-russes-leon-bakst-Diaghilev

http://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/33#.Uj7aECvD9yQ
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-garrett-family-of-evergreen
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/03/26/3127882/evergreen-mansion-in-baltimore.html#.Uj7cZSvD9yQ


Great architecture.

 

Grounds in front of the mansion.

Here we are after our tour. David of course in the cameraman.
We had such a good time. Who knew this gem was in the middle of Baltimore so close the the Universities?
We had a great visit even though it was short.

After the visit we drove back to Intercourse and did laundry. What a let down.

Day 10 More Shopping and Eating

When we were at Shady Maple we couldn't resist picking up some cinnamon buns. These had (too much) icing, but were very tasty. Normally we would not eat anything this sweet for breakfast, but anything from Shady Maple is a treat. So, we scraped off some of the icing and they were great with our coffee.


Our first stop was right next door to our campsite. Who knew this place was here. In past stays at this CG we've only seen it from the back, as we were up on the hill in a campsite behind the building. We would watch their kids play outside and I'm pretty sure where we are staying now was a cow pasture. Anyway, Ann Marie told us they had some nice things in the shop so we walked over to check it out. What a surprise right under our noses.

They had lots of homemade items for sale including quilts. This was a beautiful Mariners Compass . It was hand quilted, of course. I noticed all the quilts here seem to have thick poly batting and minimal quilting. They are gorgeous. They also had some nice table toppers and some nice patterns that were different. I picked up a few for ideas for small projects.

The shop owners SIL also makes these very pretty quilt Christmas ornaments which I found out how to make. Not as tedious as they look, but great for gifts.

They had a sign that read "Moda fabric upstairs:. We looked upstairs and they did have a little fabric. I'm sure this area has been hit heavily with quilters and quilt shows and decided they had better get in on the fabric movement, It used to be shops only sold their own hand quilted quilts, but now are getting smarter and carrying fabrics also.

Next stop was The Old Country Store and Zooks which were across the street from each other. Zooks had lots of good prices, but nothing that appealed to me and TOCS always has a great selection of fabrics, books, kits and FQs. I found a couple of batiks that will work with my BOM that I'm working on at home, They have their fabric arranged so nicely. The center of the room has all of the fabrics by color together. Then around the room it is organized by collection and manufacturer. And they have a LOT of fabric. Then they have a separate room for flannels and solids. It's just too bad I don't have a project in mind.

This was such a simple, but striking quilt on the wall. It's the choice of colors that makes it and the picture doesn't do it justice.

 

So many shops sell quilts. I love this place
.
About 4:30 we took a ride over the Lapps Family Farm. They are the ones that provide the fresh ice cream for the ice cream socials at the CG in August. Rennie told us how to get to the farm where we could get some homemade ice cream. The cream content on this ice cream is very high so it is really good and creamy. It was no small task to find this place and if you go at milking time you can eat your ice cream while they are milking the cows. I was expecting an old farm and hand milking. NOT SO. The farm was beautiful and very clean and modern.

My butter pecan ice cream YUM!!!

We sat on the big front porch to eat our ice cream and noticed the sign on the wall. Check out the last paragraph.

This is a working farm, but it is the Lapp's family farm so they live here and maintain the property beautifully. We couldn't  believe the ice cream store had a drive thru. Who wouldn't want to stop and eat your ice cream right here.

After we finished eating we walked down to the farm and milking area.

 

They had several new baby calves. AAAAHHH They were so sweet.

And then the mamas were all lined up getting milked by a milking machine, This place was so clean--it was spotless.

 

What a fun time at the farm.