Focht Family Blog

We checked into Normandy Farms Campground in Foxboro on Friday. This was the closest campground to Boston that we could find. Saturday we decided to take a child friendly walking tour of Boston. I’m not sure if you can see the markings on the ground but the markings show where the water used to be to show how much of Boston was created…

The tour talked a lot about Samuel Adams. Every time the tour guide said Sam Adams everyone was supposed to pose like the Sam Adams statue. Here is Timmy in his Sam Adams pose…

The tour showed a lot of the architecture in Boston. One of the things the guide pointed out was all of the different weather vains. Here is one of my favorites…

Here is Nathan showing the kids how the bricks were laid on a building that has made it strong enough to still be standing…

One of the stops was at a statue of the Democratic donkey. There was a spot in front of it for a Republican to stand where they could stand up to the donkey. Here is my mom by the donkey…

The guide also took us to King’s Chapel, founded in 1686. Here is a picture of one of the family boxes that people still sit in while attending services…

The last picture if from the cemetery behind King’s Chapel. Apparently at one point they were fixing things up and all of the headstones were moved and then replaced. All of the bodies are still buried there but the headstones aren’t where they started so no one actually knows which bodies are where. This gravestone was one that shows an “A” that they say helped inspire the Scarlet Letter…

Nathan decided to take a drive down memory lane. On the way to Boston we stopped at a wonderful place that he used to go to as a child. Here are the kids and I showing off our ice cream…

I was holding Nathan’s ONE scoop cone. Here is Nathan when he was starting to give up…

Here is a picture of all of us under the sign out front…

The portions were so huge that my one scoop sundae took me two days to eat. It was so good the whole family decided to make Nathan take us back again before we left Massachusetts! :)

We decided to go to Kennebunkport for a night before heading to Boston.  We stayed at a very nice campground called Red Apple Campground. We found out that President Bush was in town because he was going to parachute the next morning for his birthday. We decided to drive through the town and look at everything. The campground owner showed us where to drive on the map and showed us where the Bush’s house was so we could take a look.

Here is a picture that we took of President Bush’s house…

And here is a picture of the Secret Service vehicle that was sitting where we took the picture…. :)

From there we went to the beach. Here is Nathan holding a shivering Josh. Josh had been sick the day before this. What we didn’t know at the time was that Josh was shivering because his fever was back…

I was the only one brave enough to put my feet in. However, when I took my socks off I found that I had picked up a tick while at the horses that morning. I found out accidentally that ticks do not like salt water. A few minutes after getting back in the truck from the beach, the tick came out on his own….

Unfortunately Josh’s fever did not respond to the medicine so we also got to see the ER at the hospital near Kennebunkport. :) The little stinker’s fever broke in the middle of the night so I guess we should have waited it out for a few more hours. :)

Obviously I am behind AGAIN! :)

Between Vermont and Boston we had a couple of stops. One of them was a visit to one of the Garnets, Stefanie, where she taught Samantha about horses and caring for them. Here is Samantha watching one of the horses, Jezebel…

Stefanie had Samantha help her feed the horses and muck out the stables and lead the horses in and out of their stables. Stefanie’s son Diego decided he was going to show Samantha how to take the manure out once the stables were mucked. Here is Diego with his own wheelbarrow…

Here is Samantha learning how to brush the horses… I think this was Lacrosse…

And a picture of Samantha and Stefanie leading one of the horses to the corral…

Thank you Stefanie for such a great day full of education! :)

The last tour of the day was at Cabot Creamery. They have tastings of all of their cheeses once you enter the store. Josh and Timmy decided they needed to pose in the cow at the front door…

And of course we had to have the rare three headed cow…

Once again the tour starts with a movie. This one talks about the cooperative of dairy farmers that contribute to the cheese and the measures that they take to have consistency. Here is the room that the movie is shown covered in the many ribbons they have won for their cheddar cheeses…

Today they were making 50% reduced fat cheddar that was going to the west coast. The difference is that they send orange cheeses to the west coast and the cheeses on the east coast are white. The cream that they remove from the cheese to reduce the fat is used for sour cream. Here is a picture of the curds being stirred….

Here are the sour cream containers coming down the belt and being packaged together…

And lastly the boxing machine that boxes up the blocks of curds…

After this tour we were all a bit worn out and the kids were crashing from the sugar overload earlier. On the way out of Vermont we saw one of the coolest things we have seen since being on the road. Of course the unfortunate part is that I was not camera ready. As we were driving through the back roads getting back to the highway a large black animal came running out of the woods. It was a black bear!! It ran across the street in front of us and was only about 75 feet from us!! I am so sorry I couldn’t get the camera out in time. We slowed down by where it went back into the woods on the other side but I couldn’t see it to get a picture.

The dogs decided that the day had been long for them as well. As we were driving through New Hampshire I looked down to see that both of the dogs were napping and that Dory was using Tinkerbell as a pillow…