Patriots' Day

We went to the Minute Man National Park on Saturday.  It was overcast but mild - perfect for walking around.

The Concord Bridge - where the fighting between the colonists & the British Regulars began on April 19, 1775.  "The Shot Heard 'Round the World"
Also perfect for climbing our favorite giant bush.  This is Kimi at the top - I'm taking the picture from a terrace that is a whole level higher than where the walking path is that leads to the base of this shrub.  

We've been coming to this park with the kids for years & they have always loved climbing this thing.  Of course, they are a bit taller than when they were 3 or 4!

Shaun's up there - look very closely!

Family portrait - Kimi got in it by adding her fingers into the frame!

The park often has people dressed in period clothing available to talk to visitors.  They are not "reenactors" - they don't pretend they are living in that time.  They instead provide a nice visual as they talk about the history connected to this area.

This is the Old Manse:

"Between two tall gateposts of roughhewn stone . . . we behold the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees."  So beginsMosses from an Old Manse, the set of short stories Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote while living at The Old Manse.The landscape Hawthorne describes is still recognizable to a present-day visitor more than 160 years later.  A recreation of Henry David Thoreau's vegetable garden, planted in 1842 as a wedding gift to the Hawthornes, still flourishes in the same location.  The Concord River flows serenely past the Manse and under its neighbor, the North Bridge, site of the famous "shot heard 'round the world" that started the American Revolution on April 19, 1775.