East or west, home is best.

In my last post I mentioned our vacation, and then the blog was quiet.  Well, we're back!  What a great time we had.  This summer we went to New England, beginning with Maine and ending on Cape Cod.  Lobstah, lobstah, lobstah, plus a fair amount of ice cream and some awesome clam chowdah thrown in there.  (It was also fun for us Southerners to imitate that dry, dry New England accent!)

We had so much fun!  My kids are the absolute best to travel with:  they get along well, they're pretty tolerant of LOTS of museums, and they only get hungry every two hours or so.  I had fun posting about our trip to France last year, so I'll probably do a couple of posts about where we stayed.  But I wanted to put a quick post up to share some of our impressions.

First:  I love small museums!  I think we all did...from the Seacoast Science Museum in Odiorne Point State Park, New Hampshire, to the Old State House Museum in Boston, to the Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod, these were little "bites" of information, enough to keep us all interested for an hour or two.  None of them demanded all day, but each one rewarded us with some interesting glimpses into whatever they were trying to teach us.

Then:  History is chock-a-block full of amazing people you have probably never heard of, people like Dr. Joseph Warren, a young doctor and spy killed at Bunker Hill; and Commodore Isaac Hull, brave captain of the U.S.S. Constitution; and Captain Cassin Young, awarded the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross, killed at Guadalcanal, with a destroyer named after him.  So many stories, and if you stand still and listen you will be moved to tears by the incredible bravery and fortitude of these men.  At least, my husband and I were.  I could name so many others...Dawes, Parker, Hancock (okay, you've probably heard of him, but talk about someone who had everything to lose).

And:  We in the Southeast are blessed beyond belief with our beaches.  Not to sound ungrateful or like a rude guest or anything, but all the beaches that we saw were kind of, well, small.  And shelly.  Or seaweedy.  And COLD!!  I grew up heading to the Florida panhandle, mile after endless mile of pure white sugar sand and warm Gulf water.  And Bill went to high school in St. Pete, so he has his own opinions about a proper beach.  We did see the beach on Martha's Vineyard, and it was pretty, and the beach in Ogunquit is huge and flat, but, truly, Florida is special.  I guess you don't know what you have til you see the other possibilities.  (And now we are planning a long weekend to the Gulf!)

More to come, I think.  And I'll say this, too:  Tripadvisor ROCKS.  This is our second trip booking all of our accommodations based on their recommendations, and it was spot-on again.  I'm writing reviews of our lodgings and some restaurants over there as "PeachtreeMom4" if you're interested.