Gloucester, MA

Today we explored Gloucester, MA and stopped at the Visitors' Center for information. Outside was this beautiful holly bush.

The 25 mile trip to Gloucester, a fishing port north of Boston, was fascinating. We went through every little town (only a couple of miles apart) and saw beautiful old houses dating back to the 1700s.





Gloucester (pronounced Glos-ta) was a lovely old fishing town with a lot of history being the second oldest settlement (1631) in the country. I knew of it because of the book and movie "The Perfect Storm" which told of the amazing storm that took the lives of six fisherman in 1991.


We visited a museum, took a board walk, walked on the beach, and I had a grilled blueberry peach muffin at a teeny little (that's not redundant-it was small) cafe that was to die for.



Sometimes the best museum really talks to you. That's what this Diver's Museum did! This is Paul who owns this collection of diving equipment. He began diving his junior year of high school and has been doing it for sixty years. He has used almost all of the equipment in his museum. He was a great story teller (having been a sixth grade teacher in his other life)!






A walk along the boardwalk took us to the Fisherman's Statue, a tribute to the thousands of fisherman who have died from this small but old village. The records date back to the late 1600s and are as recent as the 2000s.


















We got to wait for the drawbridge to open to let the boats through--they have the right of way!











And of course, we had to do dinner! But this time we found a lobster "shop". Mark was excited because he really wanted to hold one of those things and he and Mitch cleaned them us and we had wonderful grilled corn and lobster!






After dinner we headed to Hodgie's Ice Cream. We had found this place with Jackie and Jerry many years ago and have talked about it ever since. We were surprised when we found we were only camped a couple of miles from it. The cone Mitch is holding is a "one scoop" as opposed to a small which is a $5.00 cone. The prices are up a bit from the first time we were here, but you certainly got your moneys worth.

I think we overfed Mark in the few days he was with us, but we had a great time. He's off on the rest of his adventure to visit New York City before he heads back to Minnesota. Safe travels, Mark, and have fun!