Massachusetts: Lexington and Concord

 On our way from Pittsfield to Boston, Clay and I stopped in Concord, MA to visit some Revolutionary War sites.  Here is the Old North Bridge where the "Shot Heard Around the World" was fired which began the war.  It was a beautiful site.






Then we visited the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (not the one in the story.  We saw the burial sites/stones of Henry David Thoreau, Louisa M. Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  It was weird because people had left notes, pencils, rocks and other stuff on/near their stones.

Then we headed to a  tavern in the Minute Men Park where a lot of the leaders of the Minute Men and colonial army gathered to plan. 

The house on the right is Louisa M Alcott's house:  Orchid house where Little Women was written and based on.  The house on the left is the "Author's House" where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived.

 We finished up the day by visiting Walden Pond.  The tiny house above is a replica of the house Henry David Thoreau built on Walden Pond when he wrote the book by the same name.  Clay got a kick out of it.  It was in the parking lot of the park.  The picture below is the actual site of the house, closer to the pond.

Overall, it was a fun and exhausting day.  We did a bit of war and literature history.  I learned a lot that day, especially about the Revolutionary war.  It was neat to see the actual place where the war began and to learn about ordinary people stepping forward to protect their country :)