Day 7 - Driving to Boston

Our return trip to Boston was (surprise!) very rainy. But we were lucky that the important things did not get rained on.

We took a swing inland through Bangor & Agusta on the way back, mainly so we could stop in Vassalboro. This is a small town just outside of Waterville & Winslow, where Mom's dad's family is from. I had tried to find out ahead of time the address of the cemetary where they are buried, with no luck. Mom's records said "North Vassalboro Cemetary" and when I googled it, nothing. (Except our genealogy site)I contacted the Vassalboro Historical Society, who referred me to the County Clerk, who would only say "Come in and I'll see what I can do."

So armed with only the address of the Vassalboro County Clerk, off we went. Arrived at the clerks office, and was told there were TWENTY-SEVEN cemetaries in the town of Vassalboro, and none of them were called "North Vassalboro" - Sigh. She handed me a list of cemetaries and a big fat binder to look through. It was just as tough someone had walked through the cemataries row by row, writing everything down. There was a cemetary that was called "North Vassalboro Village" the pages for that cemetary were about an inch thick, but I started in as fast as I could aware of Darrin & the kids waiting in the car.

I was getting frustrated when another employee came over and said "Here- we just got this back" - it was an INDEX! Some kid - as an Eagle Scout Project - had gone through the big fat book and produced an alphabetical index! (Thank you, thank you, thank you!) and so I was able to get the information quickly. It was North Vassalboro Village, which was right around the corner.

We drove over there and wandered around until we found them. (There was no plat info - just which cemetary, so we had to wander quite a bit) Found some other Reynolds, probably related somehow, but we don't know how. Darrin got pictures of them anyway.

I won't post the headstone pictures here, but you can see them on our genealogy site under "What's New" - scroll down to "Cemetaries & Headstones"



After the cemetary adventure, we drove to the one and only picnic table in the town of Vassalboro. It is between the Historical Society's office and China Lake. Ate a picnic lunch and let the kids run around a bit.



Then we drove to the town of Bath to the Maine Maritime Museum (Try saying THAT ten times fast!) It was an interesting museum, all about shipbuilding in the 1700 & 1800s - It was interesting, but by this time it was pouring down rain and much of the museum is in a series of small builings (the buildings used for shipbuilding, all restored) and so we were dashing from building to building in the rain, forced to choose between running in the muddy paths or on the wet grass. We kind of sloshed through it all. (Pictures are coming of all this, but they are not ready yet.)

The kids really loved a model of a 1950's tugboat. They could steer, blow the whistles, and operate the ham radio.

Then it was off to Boston. We made a pit stop in New Hampshire, just so the kids could say that they'd done more that just drive through. Took a picture of a fire hydrant there, for our series to be called "Fire Hydrants Across America" (So far we have Utah, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Hamshire, Maine, Texas and Virginia.)



Ate dinner at a place called "Friendly's" which is mostly an ice cream place, but they had food, too. The kids loved that they got Sundaes with their kids meal.

Drove into downtown Boston and checked into our hotel. The room was very small and cramped, we had to stack the furniture in the corner to make room for Brynn's rollaway bed.