Hartwell Tavern Historical Area

A couple of months ago I was running about an hour early for an appointment and stumbled upon the Minute Man National Historical Park.  Since I only had an hour to spare, I took a 20 minute walk through part of the park and took some pictures for for a few minutes.  Since this park spans several miles I would suggest reading up about certain parts of it before planning your tour of it.

If you plan to visit the park with your kids be sure to bring a carriage for young ones and a really good pair of walking shoes.  The ground is nice and firm so hiking boots are not needed.  During my brief visit I noticed that I was one of the few people on foot compared to all of the people on bikes.

The correct post title for this should be “native people’s home site in Plymouth MA” or “Wampanoag Homesite Plimoth MA” but since most people still refer to Native people as Indians I decided to title it so people can search for it.

My daughter had Tuesday off from school so we toured the Wampanoag Homesite and we had such a great time we returned today with my wife and other daughter.  Being able to actually see how the Native people live, eat, and do their daily tasks was a real eye opener!  Watching my daughter ask them dozens of questions and getting easy to understand answers was just priceless!

Once you arrive at the start of the tour the is the sign in the picture informing you of some rules which I would suggest following.  It was hard for me to get use to call the Native people something other than “Indian” since it is the term that I used for the past 38 years of my life.  After a while it became entertaining listening to people correct their selves midway through saying Indian.  The tour starts on a long windy path and ends up in the Wampanoag homesite about 5 minutes later.

The homesite consist of a half dozen or so buildings that are constructed of cedar trees and covered with bark.  The buildings last for about 20 years before they are burned down to return them to the earth.  There are between 3 and 8 Native people “on staff” to answer your questions.  While they are answering your questions they are conducting their day to day chores like this lady who is cooking a rabbit.

Inside of one of these Wampanoag homes we listened to an elderly Wampanoag lady talk about their lifestyle and what everyone did for chores.  The sides of the building have full lenght benches that are covered with deer hides that they use as beds.  There are 3 vents on the roof so depending on the weather they can have 1-3 fires going to keep them warm.  Since we toured this village in early November it was cold but the one fire kept us nice and warm!  I could go on for pages about how we enjoyed this tour but in my opinion you really need to visit it on your own to get all that this tour offers.

The Pilgrim Memorial State Park is located in Plymouth MA and in my opinion it is a must see if you have any interest in our history.  Aside from a lack of free parking and the fact that they are not shy when it comes to charging you to go on the Mayflower 2 (a reproduction of the original) the park is full of history.  Since you might have to park a few blocks away you can enjoy a nice walk along the ocean and there is plenty of sea glass to collect on the beach.

The “Plymouth Rock” cracks me up, people travel from all over the world to see it and then complain about how boring it is.  I don’t see how people would expect a rock to be anything less than boring so enjoy my boring picture of it.

I will do another post about the Mayflower 2 since I took a bunch of pictures of it.  The Mayflower 2 is a working sail boat that goes out from time to time and it is generally staffed with a couple of actors.  These actors play the part of the crew and passengers and are able to answer just about any question that you can dream up.  The tour is expensive but in my opinion it is worth the money.  We ended up buying an annual family membership for $115 that allows us to go on the Mayflower and the Plantation tour 3 miles down the ocean.

Our new Weimaraner joined us for the tour with the exception of going on the Mayflower.  My daughter had a blast walking him and asking dozens of questions of the tour staff.  We ended up going to Plymouth twice in the same week for the tours and will hopefully return next weekend before the close for the season.