Avoiding Boston and our new home town of Essex, MA

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

August 5, 2022

This summer we are using more no-hook-up and sites with only low-hook-ups than ever before. We have appreciated the hospitality of Boondocker Welcome hosts in places where we couldn't find a good campground. It was warm last night, and we only had 15-amp electrical hook-ups. That's not enough for air-conditioning, so we have had to adapt this summer. We run the generator long enough for our air-conditioners to cool down the interior of the motor home. We purchased two small fans this summer--one that plugs in and can use the 15 amps we had last night. The other is charged and powered by a USB port, so we can use it when we have no hook-ups at all. We've used both of them this summer, and were glad to have them last night.

After a nice send-off from our Boondocker Welcome host, we were on the road toward northeast Massachusetts. That means that we have the unpleasant drive around the Boston metropolitan area looming ahead of us today. Mark had planned to stay away from the center of Boston, so he drove on one of the outside loops that surround the city. We have heard bad things about Boston traffic, and we were really trying to avoid it. We had a stop planned for the day, so we parked the motor home at a mall parking lot in Burlington, and then drove the pickup to Lowell, Massachusetts. 

Lowell has a national historic site, that includes the Boott Cotton Mills Museum that you see pictured above. This city once had ten fabric mills that hired 10,000 people, and it was built as a factory city starting in 1821. The national historic site allowed us to go inside one of those mills. Visitors get to walk through the weave room, set up to look like it did in 1910. When a visitor enters, the attendant starts up several of these machines so that we could experience the loud clattering of the mill. While only a small percentage of the weaving machines were going as we walked through, it was very noisy. It's hard to imagine how loud it was when all the looms were going at once.

The machines that were turned on seemed to be in the back of the room, so we were having a hard time figuring out exactly how they worked. When we stopped to study the mechanism, the man in charge noticed our interest. Just for us, he started one of the looms on the front row so that we could see it clearly in action. It was interesting to see the machine up close, and to watch how all the parts worked to use string coming in from the top to make the cloth rolling out the bottom. The mills in Lowell made millions of yards of cloth.

He gave us a personal tour showing us how all the parts worked and how he can program different weaves using metal plates. Most visitors simply walk through this room quickly, but we enjoyed our special individualized tour.

The upstairs part of the mill has been transformed into a museum that explains how the Merrimack River that runs through town could generate the power needed to run the mills. Once they had the machinery and the power, they still needed people to run the machines. Young women were recruited from across the New England states to live in these boarding houses that were also part of the national historic site. They were called "mill girls," and their jobs required they work 12-14 hours each day. The company gave them a curfew and required them to attend church on Sunday.

Girls that had lived on the farm all their lives were recruited to learn how to run the looms, and they experienced city life in Lowell. Young women could earn money for the first time in their lives. By the time they paid for a room and meals served in the company-owned dining room, most of their money went back to the mill company.

We had an interesting day touring this large national historic site, but it was hot! We are under a heat advisory because it is supposed to climb all the way up to 90 degrees today. It was too hot to run the trolley that transports visitors to the different sites around town, so we are walking it. While we might laugh at closing down things for 90 degrees, it does feel really hot here with the added humidity. By definition, three days of temperatures over 90 degrees is a heat wave here. So we are in the middle of a heat wave by New England standards.

All those women making money at the mill needed a place to keep their meager savings safe. We had to chuckle at the name of the local bank--the Lowell Five Cent Savings Bank.

A farmer's market was in full swing in downtown Lowell, so we got another stop today.

By the time we returned to the motor home at the mall beside the interstate in Burlington, it was 2:30. We could see that there was a 21 minute delay on route 95 around Boston. Even though we were trying to avoid Boston, the traffic was still crazy.

The traffic delay edged up to 29 minutes when it started to rain. It was a tough travel day! When we finally arrived at our Boondockers Welcome host in Essex, Massachusetts, it was still sprinkling. We were certainly glad to get hooked up to the 30-amp electricity to run the air conditioner in this unusual heat and rain.

The rain finally cleared, so we could take a walk around our new home town of Essex, Massachusetts. They are replacing the bridge that runs over the river in town, and the huge crane was lit up by the the sun that was getting low in the sky by now.

Essex is on a peninsula of land known as Cape Anne. While most people know only of Massachusetts's Cape Cod that is south of Boston, this is the "other cape" just north of Boston. By definition, a cape is a narrow peninsula that juts into a body of water. That means that everywhere we walk this evening, we aren't far from the water.

We walked to the unusual town hall and library that was built in 1893. We stopped to watch a bit of the baseball game at the memorial park below the town hall, where the people of Essex have been playing ball for over 120 years. We also found some live music outside a local restaurant. We love becoming part of small-town America, even though it is very far from the small town where we used to live.

We walked through the old burying ground . . .

where we found some unusual above-ground graves.

The town harbor in Essex is calm this evening after the day's storms. We walked back to the motor home where we ate a meal made up of the gifts we have received from our recent hosts. We had tuna casserole and pickles from Brad and Marianne, peppers and tomatoes from Doug's garden, and a salad from the lettuce grown by Herman. We enjoyed it in the cool provided by the electricity from our current host--Ernie. These are all first names of people that we have spent time with this summer. We have been blessed by the places and the people in our wanderings this summer!