Baton Rouge week 35
Hi there!
This is the late letter. We left Baton Rouge for Reading, Mass last Thursday. It has been a whirlwind adventure. I think the reason so many people live there is that they don’t know how to get out. The roads are poorly marked, they wind around, they change names, any road you are on curves so much that you can’t tell if you are coming or going. Maybe you are doing both. Lant claimed that the saying in the area is “the way to go is the way you know.” People are afraid to leave. The only landmarks are the trees and they all look alike. No mountains, no sun, just the crazy haze of winter.
We got in late Thursday night to a welcome of snow and ice. The next morning went started towards Abbey from Manchester, New Hampshire. It is about 50 miles and we finally found her Monday morning and three tanks of gas later. Just kidding! You can wander around and things look familiar then you remember you saw them in the background of a movie.
We found Abbey with Drew and Connor. We had lunch at a McDonald’s and went to the house to see were Abbey spends her days. After that Drew and Connors grandma came over to sit with them from about two o’clock on. We then went on a tour of the basic Concord area. We saw the free library in Concord that has a large collection of books by authors from the area: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Alcott and myriad of others. We also drove by the minuteman national park and several local houses that these various dignitaries lived in and owned over the years. We also went into the gift shop of a local museum. We learned that concord was really the hot bed of the revolution primarily because Boston was inhabited by British troops. After the Boston massacre and the Boston Tea Party many of the revolutionary leaders in the area had to flee. Clearly the British knew who many of them were. Unlike the leaders in other areas of the 13 colonies, the leaders in the Boston area who fled to Concord and the like seemed willing to push the issue.
We made our way over to Diane and Lant’s house. The journey was only a day or two because Abbey had been there before (the way to go is the way you know). They had just arrived from a ski vacation in Utah on Thursday. We talked with them some and then everyone headed off to bed after a game or two.
Take care of each other.
We love you.
Dad and Dana
PS. No one wrote to complain about not getting a weekly letter. Oh well, nice to be missed. I’ll write again Sunday.