July 7 = Day 11

Synopsis:  422 miles driven; 9 hours on the road; Greenfield, MA to Woburn, Ma; Visited Mount Washington, Atlantic Ocean in Maine, Salem

Yes! Another hot breakfast at the hotel including sausage and eggs - I had a sausage, egg, muffin sandwich for breakfast before hitting the road at 7:30 am. We drove for about 4 hours from Massachusetts into Vermont, then into New Hampshire. The ride is very peaceful - including wide open highways with hardly any other cars and state roads passing through quaint little towns. We kept seeing "Moose Crossing" signs everywhere. We kept looking for a moose but this is as close as we got!

We got to Mount Washington and got one of our first surprises for the trip. I did all the research for the trip and in all my research I never came across anything about a cost. Well, it does. It cost us $55 to drive up and down in our own van. But that's better than the $169 it would have cost us to have them drive us up or $345 for our family to ride the cog railway up and back. If you go to drive yourself, make sure you read their directions on how to navigate the 12% grade of the mountain up and down. Also, (Lisa's advice) make sure the driver and passenger are comfortable with heights, huge drop-offs and no guardrails.

After we got down, we headed for Maine. I remember a place our family (my parents) visited in Maine called the Clambake (http://www.clambakerestaurant.com/).

We stopped in for lupper (lunch and supper. If you go with a large family like our's, order a couple of kid's meals (anyone of any age can order them and they are a good quantity) and (1), that's one, #1 Fisherman's Plate - Captains edition. They say it feeds two. We had a full leftover box. The plate of fish, shrimp, clams, scallops and fries was a 12" plate piled about 6 inches high. People actually made comments as I brought it to the table! We stopped around the corner for the kids to dip their feet into the Atlantic.

We then drove south to our hotel just outside Boston. On our way, we stopped in Salem to visit the memorial to those who died as a part of the Salem Witch trials. There are a lot of commercial, touristy (tacky) things you can do in the town that have nothing or very little to do with history. There are many old historic houses but the memorial is the only "free" thing to do. So...being who we are, that's were we headed. Also, given that we didn't make it into town until 6:00 pm limited our choices. Finally got to our hotel and enjoyed some fresh chocolate chip cookies courtesy of the front desk.

Hotel Deal of the Day: One night at a Marriott for $0 by using points accrued with initial purchase on credit card.