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Massachusetts: The Bay State
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And, of course, there is history.
Boats still seek whales off the Massachusetts coast, though now they're full of sightseers instead of the whalers who once trod the cobbled streets of Nantucket and New Bedford, where their enterprise is recalled in museums and a national park. On Nantucket's sister island of Martha's Vineyard, Edgartown is a small ocean of sea captains' homes clad in white clapboards and black shutters.
The far-ranging sailors of Salem brought the riches and curios of the world back home. See their treasures at the Peabody Essex Museum before you indulge in Salem's spooky attractions that trade on an enduring obsession with the witchcraft trials of 1692. The spirit of beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac still seems to haunt his native Lowell, where a national park in the old textile mills relates the transformation of America from farming to industry.
An earlier transformation -- from colony to nation -- began in Lexington and Concord, where fed-up Colonials and frustrated Redcoats came to blows and set off the American Revolution. Their story continues along the red-lined path of Boston's Freedom Trail embedded now in the glass and steel high-rise modern city, the region's largest.
Even when the Sons of Liberty tossed British tea in the harbor, Massachusetts was already old. Just a few miles south of Boston, you can peer down upon Plymouth Rock and imagine Massachusetts as the Pilgrims first saw it and visit Plimoth Plantation for a total immersion experience in 17th-century colonial and Wampanoag life. So much of Massachusetts leads us back in time and tradition and then forward to today's best travel destinations.
Reader Comments
Comment from H BRINK on May 1, 2008
What would the Pilgrims say?
Comment from Alan Brouillet on May 28, 2009
Dear Yankee, Thank you for the descriptions of the New England states...they give a delightful overview of things to see. I live in Gardner MA, which is in North Central MA. I was hoping the area that I live in might be mentioned but it wasn't. I know I'm biased, but we have exciting things to see out here too! It would take me too long to mention all the attractions in this area, but I will mention one: the drive to the top of Wachusett Mountain, which one can see Boston to the East, the Berkshires to the West, Mt. Monadnock to the North and who knows what to the South, on a clear day of course! Simply breathtaking, in my opinion! Thanks...Alan Brouillet
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