Ending on a high note

I promise I am getting to the end of our trip recap.

Our last full day, we went to Salem.  I have sort of a love hate relationship with Salem.  I love the history there and the beauty of the place and the connection there is there to Adam's family.

I hate the Halloween-esque witch celebrating darkness aspect of it.

It feels at best tacky and at worst really disrespectful and callous considering the Witch Trials and what actually happened there.  I am just glad I've never been there in late October.

The night before our day in Salem, Adam and I did some laundry and then sat in the hotel lobby and researched some family history on his laptop and my ipad.

We took notes of who in his family was buried in Salem.

We read about John Proctor who is Adam's 10th great grandfather and who was hung in the witch trials.  When we told our kids about them, Braeden and Emma who are familiar with The Crucible, got a little excited.  Adam pointed out the ways that The Crucible and actual history differ.  In The Crucible, John Proctor had an affair with his accuser.  In real life, he'd never met her.

I sort of think that's a key distinction.

Anyway, armed with my scribbles, we headed out.

We started at the National Maritime Historical Site and followed along on a tour hosted by a National Park Ranger.  He was smart and interesting and we loved the tour. 

Here's the USS Friendship, which is a replica of the actual 1797 ship.  We got to go aboard and it was pretty great.  (Mark wants to become a sailor now.  It may have been the cannons that tipped the scale.  Do they still have cannons on merchant ships?)

Here's the Custom House which was key to the Salem maritime trade and where Nathanial Hawthorne worked as a disgruntled government employee:

We went to the cemetery where John Proctor is memorialized, along with the other victims of the witch trials:

We saw only one other grave of Adam's relatives.  I'd like to think we saw more, just couldn't tell that was where they were buried.  About half the headstones are so old and weathered, they are unreadable.

Our next and final stop of the journey was Portsmouth, NH.  Adam and I never went there when we lived in Connecticut and Adam found us a fancy schmancy hotel to splurge on for the last night.

Wentworth by the Sea

It was the prettiest hotel I've ever stayed at, with unbeatable views of the marina out the window.

After being on the road all week in comfortable, but sometimes a little crowded, circumstances, this place had an upstairs bedroom and bathroom for Adam and me which felt like the height of luxury for the introvert in the family.

Here's the view from the upstairs bedroom:

I could get used to waking up to that.

The kitchen was so pretty.  White cabinets are my love language.

Adam and the kids went swimming in the posh pool and I...didn't.  The kids kept telling Adam that he should call me and tell me how great the pool was and that I should join them.  Adam kept telling the kids that that he thought I was happy alone.

He was right.

When they got back we went on an explore around the marina:

Keeping warm in our new Newport sweatshirts...I bought mine because the ocean breeze was cool.  Emma wanted one too but refused to wear it until we left Newport.  She has her own set of rules she lives by in life.

We took a drive around the town and even ventured into Maine, just to say we had.  We loved driving around Portsmouth.


There's no end to the lovely and diverse places there are in the world.

We stopped by a grocery store for crackers and cheese, chips and guacamole, ginger ale and fresh raspberries, and had a lovely dinner.

This picture...Mark fell in love with the bathrobe he found in the closet, Braeden is eating which is completely typical, Emma is looking mournful just because my children like to make faces for cameras.

The next morning it was off to JFK to fly back to our mountain home.

I loved our trip.

I loved finding notes like this (from Emma) in the hotel rooms:

I loved planning and scheming with Adam and making it happen and sitting next to him and enjoying our children's reactions to things.

I loved these three in the backseat:

Time spent, with the five of us together, is a gift.