After a long but enjoyable journey we finally arrived at New England which was to be our home for the next 10 or so days. As we drove through the towns and cities we became quite nostalgic as all the old familiar English names appeared on the road signs.
Enroute we stopped at Lenox, Massachuetts a small New England town that has a historical district to visit. It was just how we imagined New England towns to be, with the beautiful old palatial homes, a really lovely place to see.
Whilst staying in Milford, we headed to Salem, famous for the 17th Century witch trials. It wasn't quite what we expected, it was very commercialised, but we still enjoyed the visit.
Continuing on to Cape Cod we arrived at our home for the next 7 nights. We stayed at Chatham Guest Suites, a really lovely place to stay. Our apartment was gorgeous, it had a cosy den with one wall full of built in bookshelves and even a wooden ladder to climb to reach the top shelves, and Tony definitely made good use of the whirlpool bath (every night).
Unfortunately, due to car trouble we had to curtail our excursions, but still managed to visit a few places. Chatham is a pleasant place to stay, it has a town centre that you can walk around and really good white sand beaches, which we mainly had to ourselves, as the main tourist season was over.
We also visited Orleans and Provincetown (at the tip of Cape Cod). Provincetown is the place where the Pilgrims first landed on American soil (to replenish supplies) before continuing on their way to Plymouth. We really enjoyed our visit there, it was such a pleasant town to go to, it has a nice ambience about the place, it reminded us both of a West Country fishing village. Would definitely return there again. Whilst walking back to the car we came upon the salvaging of a 48 foot Tuna boat. It had broken away from its moorings in a storm a couple of days earlier. We sat on the beach for a couple of hours in the sunshine whilst watching the salvage operation.
After the 7 nights (which went too quickly) we said a sad farewell to Cape Cod and started on our return journey back to the West Coast of USA. Due to the great distance we had to cover we hurriedly drove through Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee, though we did stop at our namesake (Harrisonburg, Virginia) and explored the town, we loved the shoe shop (see the photo, you should have been with us Janine).
We also stopped at one of the tourist attractions, The Lost Sea Adventure in Tennessee. There is an 18th Century village to stroll around, then there are the huge caverns to explore which includes a boat trip on an underground lake. A pleasant experience, worth seeing especially when we visited as it was pouring with rain outside.
We continued on our journey through Arkansas, Oklahoma and passed through Texas on our way to New Mexico stopping at Alburquerque for our Starbucks fix and a visit to Borders bookstore. We stayed in a good hotel right on the old Route 66 Highway in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, the name is definitely better than the town.
Atter leaving Santa Rosa we drove to Flagstaff, Arizona where we were looking forward to spending a couple of days and visiting The Grand Canyon.
PS: Tony outside the tower is from the Grand Canyon visit, I put it on in error, but as Tony said he is definitely worth seeing more than once.
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